Gaza

Joe Biden can point to a few concrete foreign-policy accomplishments during his presidency thus far. Ukraine would be in far worse shape against Russia were it not for the financial, economic and military assistance the White House has provided. Washington has also done a commendable job getting Japan and South Korea back on speaking terms after years of bickering. Yet both of these items are tactical in nature and aren’t going to bring Biden into the history books. Shepherding a comprehensive normalization agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia, however, just might. That was, until an unprecedented Hamas-led attack into Israel threw a wrench into his plans.

As the bodies of hundreds of Israelis lay freshly butchered by Hamas terrorists, the group’s supporters from around the world celebrated — including by mourning the dead terrorists and cohosting a rally with a designated terrorist group — and urged them to “globalize the intifada.” The rallies sprouted up almost immediately after Hamas stunned Israel by launching a surprise attack, likely with Iranian assistance, on the fiftieth anniversary of the Yom Kippur War. The images of Israeli grandparents and infants being held hostage, and of Israeli villages being wiped out shocked the world. It wasn’t just Israelis who were murdered, however; nine Americans have already been confirmed among the dead, along with German, French and Cambodian citizens.

Some people think the vicious attacks on Jews happen only in Times Square or in Los Angeles restaurants. Not so. They think the apologists for these crimes are limited to the Squad and extreme leftists, some of whom actually tweeted it is wrong even to condemn anti-Semitism. That sewer of hatred would be dreadful enough, but the problem is bigger than that. The thugs on the street have some ideological backing from the mainstream media and, of course, universities. Take a truly noxious cartoon in the Boston Globe, one of America’s most prominent newspapers. It appeared in the May 22 print edition (page A9) and online on May 21. The drawing and text by Christopher Weyant efficiently consolidated elite hatred of Israel and Jews into a neat, toxic mix.

A regular column by an anonymous whistle-blower operating deep within the heart of the Social Justice Movement. To protect their identity, they will go under the code-name ‘They/Them’. Wokeyleaks is a confidential news leak organization for anyone who wishes to divulge classified information (and hilarious anecdotes) about woke culture without fear of getting canceled. To any would-be Edward Snowflakes out there: leak your woke-culture war crimes to wokeyleaks@protonmail.com. We promise to protect our sources. Having spent a lot of time in Brooklyn, I find it easier to understand Israel’s occupation of Palestine not as a ‘religious conflict’, but as a kind of militarized gentrification.

Once, long ago, in a land far away, the best journalists tried to stand aloof from the stories they reported. The idea was simple and powerful. If journalists tried to be neutral and kept their reporting separate from their opinions, analysis, and speculation, then the public would believe them. Those days are long gone — and the media’s credibility is gone with them. Journalists and media organizations are now smack in the middle of many stories they cover, in part because they want to be. They want to spin them, to set ‘the Narrative’. Imbued with this new mission, many journalists have become partisan protagonists.

There’s a lot going on in Israel. Due to indiscriminate rocket fire from Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza, schools in many Israeli cities, including Tel Aviv, were closed on Tuesday. Some have already been closed for Wednesday. The rockets target anyone and anything, and give everyone, young or old, the same amount of time, usually under one minute, to seek cover. Thanks to the shelters and Iron Dome, an air defense system which today had an interception success rate of 90 percent per the IDF, these rockets typically result in few Israeli deaths. But the collective psychological trauma of constantly being under fire is impossible to measure.

On the late afternoon of September 29, 2000 (nearly 20 years ago now), I took a cab from Jerusalem into Bethlehem to visit with an old friend and his family, the owners of a well-known Bethlehem hotel. The streets were bustling; buses filled with tourists roared up the main Jerusalem-to-Bethlehem road towards the Church of the Nativity (the reputed birthplace of Jesus), and the city’s gift shops were jammed. My plan was to stay the night, but my friend (a Palestinian Christian who’d moved to Bethlehem from Philadelphia), shook his head: ‘No room at the inn,’ he said, and smiled at his joke. ‘In fact, you won’t find a room anywhere in the city.’ I was surprised. In all of my years traveling to the West Bank, Gaza and Israel, I’d never had trouble finding a place to stay.