In the wake of the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, a great deal of attention has been given to her private life, exposing crass stereotypes held by some secular Americans about their devout compatriots. Prominent among these is the notion that religious women tend to be subservient to their husbands. Naomi Schaefer Riley and Hal Boyd point to research that suggests the opposite:

According to a report by the Wheatley Institution, . . . highly religious couples are more likely to say they make “major decisions” together. Survey data from eleven countries, including the United States, found a particularly strong correlation between shared decision-making and home-centered religious practices.

Couples who worship at home report fewer disagreements about finances. . . . And women in these relationships were also much more likely to say their partners were “forgiving,” “kind” and “responsible.” This doesn’t sound too dissimilar from, say, Amy Coney Barrett extolling her husband’s cooking in the Rose Garden.

Religious, home-worshipping couples also report greater relationship quality and stability, and they are three times more likely than less-religious peers to report a sexually satisfying relationship. The women don’t appear to be repressed; in fact, they’re generally more likely to say they’re happy and that their life has meaning and purpose.

In America, [at least], women still tend to be more religious than men, and they also tend to run the household more often than men. At home, they typically play a larger role in determining how and when holidays are celebrated, ritual meals served, and religious displays set up. . . . Indeed, it probably means that the men in these relationships are following their lead. Measured this way, then, a family’s religiosity may actually be a sign of a woman’s power, not her submissiveness.

Robert Clark explains why the resumption of hostilities is both just and necessary:

These latest Israeli strikes come after weeks of consistent Palestinian provocation; they have repeatedly broken the terms of the cease-fire which they claimed they were so desperate for. There have been numerous [unsuccessful] bus bombings near Tel Aviv and Palestinian-instigated clashes in the West Bank. Fifty-nine Israeli hostages are still held in captivity.

In fact, Hamas and their Palestinian supporters . . . have always known that they can sit back, parade dead Israeli hostages live on social media, and receive hundreds of their own convicted terrorists and murderers back in return. They believed they could get away with the October 7 pogrom.

One hopes Hamas’s leaders will get the message. Meanwhile, many inside and outside Israel seem to believe that, by resuming the fighting, Jerusalem has given up on rescuing the remaining hostages. But, writes Ron Ben-Yishai, this assertion misunderstands the goals of the present campaign. “Experience within the IDF and Israeli intelligence,” Ben-Yishai writes, “has shown that such pressure is the most effective way to push Hamas toward flexibility.” He outlines two other aims:

The second objective was to signal to Hamas that Israel is not only targeting its military wing—the terror army that was the focus of previous phases of the war up until the last cease-fire—but also its governance structure. This was demonstrated by the targeted elimination of five senior officials from Hamas’s political and civilian administration. . . . The strikes also served as a message to mediators, particularly Egypt, that Israel opposes Hamas remaining in any governing or military capacity in post-war Gaza.

The third objective was to create intense military pressure, coordinated with the U.S., on all remaining elements of the Shiite “axis of resistance,” including Yemen’s Houthis, Hamas, and Iran.