On Wednesday night, Jon Polin and Rachel-Goldberg Polin, whose son Hersh—a U.S. citizen—was taken captive by Hamas on October 7, addressed the Democratic National Convention. They were greeted by loud chants of “Bring them home!” and “USA,” as well as by tears. It was a moving moment, and a stark contrast to the scenes of protesters outside waving Iranian and Hamas flags, and burning American ones.

All this is reassuring for those worried about the anti-Israel drift of the Democratic party. Less reassuring are some of the Harris campaign’s recent personnel decisions, including the hiring of Ilan Goldenberg, who served in various national-security positions during the Biden and Obama administrations, as the liaison to the Jewish community. Seth Mandel writes:

Goldenberg is a puzzling choice. He is ideologically to the left of the current Democratic administration—of which Harris is vice-president—which is a strange signal to send. He is also, more importantly, a man of poor judgment. He has made a very public show of his opposition to just about every move intended to help Israel over the past decade or so.

Goldenberg was against moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem in recognition of its Jewish significance or of Israeli sovereignty; he wanted, instead, for it eventually to be moved only when the Palestinians had lifted their veto and decided they had what they wanted. Speaking of Israeli sovereignty, he doesn’t like that the U.S. recognizes the Golan Heights [as part of] Israel. . . . In 2020, he was an adviser to the presidential campaign of Elizabeth Warren, one of Israel’s loudest and most ignorant critics in the Senate.

Contrast the choice of Goldenberg to another person given a similar position in the campaign:

Nasrina Bargzie, Harris’s choice for Arab/Muslim liaison, has worked for the vice-president before. She also has a long record of defending the groups responsible for building up the anti-Semitism crisis on college campuses. One particular example stands out: in 2012, she and her coalition presented a report to the United Nations complaining about Jews on campus who objected to the anti-Semitic activism that has become so common. The complaint went so far as to object to Jews having Title VI protections under civil-rights law.

In other words, it seems Harris has a Jewish liaison who will appeal to anti-Israel Jews and a Muslim liaison who will appeal to anti-Israel Muslims.

Examining the effects of Iran’s decision to launch nearly 200 ballistic missiles at Israel on October 1, Benny Morris takes stock of the Jewish state’s strategic situation:

The massive Iranian attack has turned what began as a local war in and around the Gaza Strip and then expanded into a Hamas–Hizballah–Houthi–Israeli war [into] a regional war with wide and possibly calamitous international repercussions.

Before the Iranians launched their attack, Washington warned Tehran to desist (“don’t,” in President Biden’s phrase), and Israel itself had reportedly cautioned the Iranians secretly that such an attack would trigger a devastating Israeli counterstrike. But a much-humiliated Iran went ahead, nonetheless.

For Israel, the way forward seems to lie in an expansion of the war—in the north or south or both—until the country attains some sort of victory, or a diplomatic settlement is reached. A “victory” would mean forcing Hizballah to cease fire in exchange, say, for a cessation of the IDF bombing campaign and withdrawal to the international border, or forcing Iran, after suffering real pain from IDF attacks, to cease its attacks and rein in its proxies: Hizballah, Hamas, and the Houthis.

At the same time, writes Morris, a victory along such lines would still have its limits:

An IDF withdrawal from southern Lebanon and a cessation of Israeli air-force bombing would result in Hizballah’s resurgence and its re-investment of southern Lebanon down to the border. Neither the Americans nor the French nor the UN nor the Lebanese army—many of whose troops are Shiites who support Hizballah—would fight them.