The murderous attack on a kosher grocery store in Paris, write the editors of Commentary, “was the culmination of a decade of crisis” for French Jewry. The prevalence of anti-Semitism on the French right and left as well as among its Muslim population, the increasing threats to the physical safety of French Jews, and the inability or unwillingness of the French government to do anything about these problems show that the need for a Jewish state is as great as ever. But the Jewish state is itself under constant attack, not only from its enemies but also from Diaspora Jews voicing disappointment with it and seeking to undermine Zionism from within:

Zionism was not a utopian vision. It was a program, and remains a program—the means by which Jewry can and will survive into its fourth millennium. It is about providing Jews with a safe haven in the world and allowing them to exercise rights they have been denied almost everywhere on earth where they have been governed by others—save the astonishing exception of the United States. It is about letting Jews be. . . .

And yet, to some of Israel’s professed supporters, this is controversial. . . . These are people who have replaced practical Zionism with what might be called “conditional Zionism.” For the conditional Zionists, Israel was once the port of call for Jews adrift. Now, they say, the storm is over and the threat to Jewry comes more from what they see as the calamity that the storm has wreaked on the port. . . .

In their own words and actions, conditional Zionists implicitly acknowledge that the end of the need for practical Zionism is a necessary prerequisite for their own brand of Zionism—one in which left-leaning American Jews can use the state of Israel as their moral playground.

For the past 36 hours, I’ve been reading and listening to analyses of the terms and implications of the recent hostage deal. More will appear in the coming days, and I’ll try to put the best of them in this newsletter. But today I want to share a comment made on Tuesday by the Palestinian analyst Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib. While he and I would probably disagree on numerous points about the current conflict, this analysis is spot on, and goes entirely against most arguments made by those who consider themselves pro-Palestinian, and certainly those chanting for a cease-fire at all costs:

When a cease-fire in Gaza is announced, Hamas’s fascists will do everything they can to frame this as the ultimate victory; they will wear their military uniforms, emerge from their tunnels, stop hiding in schools and displacement centers, and very quickly reassert their control over the coastal enclave. They’ll even get a few Gazans to celebrate and dance for them.

This, I should note, is exactly what has happened. Alkhatib continues:

The reality is that the Islamist terrorism of Hamas, masquerading as “resistance,” has achieved nothing for the Palestinian people except for billions of dollars in wasted resources and tens of thousands of needless deaths, with Gaza in ruins after twenty years following the withdrawal of settlements in 2005. . . . Hamas’s propaganda machine, run by Qatari state media, Al Jazeera Arabic, will work overtime to help the terror group turn a catastrophic disaster into a victory akin to the battles of Stalingrad and Leningrad.

Hamas will also start punishing anyone who criticized or worked against it, and preparing for its next attack. Perhaps Palestinians would have been better off if, instead of granting them a temporary reprieve, the IDF kept fighting until Hamas was utterly defeated.