In the recent elections, Mexicans chose Claudia Sheinbaum as their next president—making her, as news outlets have noted, both the country’s first female head of state and its first Jewish one. Yet Sheinbaum has little connection to the country’s Jewish communities, and prefers to describe herself, when she mentions the subject at all, as having “Jewish origins” (of which she has said she is proud) rather than as being Jewish. Canaan Lidor observes that her detractors are far more eager to bring up the subject:

In an op-ed from December by Francisco Ruiz Quirrín, a columnist for the ultra-conservative weekly Primera Plana, he warned, in connection with a Sheinbaum victory, that “The Jewish community is willing to exert whatever pressure is necessary to influence one of its own over any political commitment.”

Vicente Fox, a former president and Mexican right-wing stalwart, has apologized for posting on [social media] last year that between Sheinbaum and Xóchitl, “the only Mexican is Xóchitl,” referring to Xóchitl Gálvez, Sheinbaum’s main rival in the elections. Fox did this in a repost of a text characterizing Sheinbaum as a “Bulgarian Jew.” Later that same year, he posted “Jewish and also a foreigner” about a picture of Sheinbaum wearing a crucifix pendant.

Nor should anyone think that Sheinbaum has any sympathy for the Jewish state:

In 2009, . . . Sheinbaum condemned Israel’s bombing in Gaza that year: “Nothing justifies the murder [sic] of Palestinian civilians. . . . Nothing can justify the murder of a child,” she wrote in a letter to a local newspaper. But she appears to have remained largely silent on Israel following Hamas’s October 7 slaughter in southern Israel. . . . This has not prevented allegations online that she is a “Zionist,” but it may have not hurt her appeal to voters critical of the Jewish state.

With the IDF engaged in ground maneuvers in both northern and southern Gaza, and a plan about to go into effect next week that would separate more than 100,000 civilians from Hamas’s control, an end to the war may at last be in sight. Yet there seems to be no agreement within Israel, or without, about what should become of the territory. Efraim Inbar assesses the various proposals, from Donald Trump’s plan to remove the population entirely, to the Israeli far-right’s desire to settle the Strip with Jews, to the internationally supported proposal to place Gaza under the control of the Palestinian Authority (PA)—and exposes the fatal flaws of each. He therefore tries to reframe the problem:

[M]any Arab states have failed to establish a monopoly on the use of force within their borders. Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, and Sudan all suffer from civil wars or armed militias that do not obey the central government.

Perhaps Israel needs to get used to the idea that in the absence of an entity willing to take Gaza under its wing, chaos will prevail there. This is less terrible than people may think. Chaos would allow Israel to establish buffer zones along the Gaza border without interference. Any entity controlling Gaza would oppose such measures and would resist necessary Israeli measures to reduce terrorism. Chaos may also encourage emigration.

Israel is doomed to live with bad neighbors for the foreseeable future. There is no way to ensure zero terrorism. Israel should avoid adopting a policy of containment and should constantly “mow the grass” to minimize the chances of a major threat emerging across the border. Periodic conflicts may be necessary. If the Jews want a state in their homeland, they need to internalize that Israel will have to live by the sword for many more years.