A BBC Reporter Suggests that French Jews Had It Coming

BBC reporter Tim Wilcox, interviewing a Jewish woman in Paris about the most recent murders of Jews, pointed out that “many critics, though, of Israel’s policy would suggest that the Palestinians suffer hugely at Jewish hands as well.” Unfortunately, writes Nick Cohen, this sort of attitude is typical of the European press:

People are demanding that the BBC fire Wilcox. I disagree for two reasons. First, you do not respond to an attack on a newspaper by firing journalists. More importantly, Wilcox is not some isolated and aberrant racist; his views are the standard opinions of the European left middle class. I meet them every day in my political neighborhood. . . . Wilcox like so many others does not understand that anti-Semitism is not a rational, if regrettably bloody, critique of Israeli foreign policy, but an insane conspiracy theory that has captured the minds of millions of fanatics, moved whole nations, and led to uncountable deaths.

I wonder how many more bombs it will take to blow these people out of their folly. In my bleaker moments, I suspect they will take it to their graves.

Read more at Spectator

More about: Anti-Semitism, BBC, Europe and Israel, European Jewry, French Jewry

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF