While Jerusalem struggles to find a way to go after Iran without angering its American ally, it still must reckon with Gaza. Elliott Abrams explains how the two goals are related, and where Washington ought to stand: One part of Israel’s response [to the attack last weekend] must be to stay the course in the Gaza Strip, despite tremendous pressure from the United States and others to retreat into what would amount to a strategic surrender. In practice, that means proceeding with plans for the Israel Defense Forces to enter the southern Gaza city of Rafah, eliminate the Hamas brigades and leade ..read more

Yesterday, the president of Columbia University testified before Congress about anti-Semitism at her institution, and efforts to combat it. Among the faculty members Minouche Shafik was asked about was Joseph Massad, who has taught at the school since 1999 and who praised the October 7 massacres as “awesome.” Martin Kramer has been warning about the rot at Columbia, and Massad in particular, since the early 2000s, and his writings about the subject are worth revisiting. These include his 2014 article dissecting the use of the Holocaust inversion—the accusation that Israel is the true successor ..read more

To many readers, especially modern ones, the book of Ecclesiastes has appeared religiously skeptical, fatalistic, or even at odds with the rest of the Hebrew Bible. To Menachem Fisch, however, it is none of these things. He argues, in conversation with J.J. Kimche, that it is “a very, very religious book,” with a monotheistic theology, where God “is present on every page.” Its structure above all resembles that of the Talmud, where multiple opinions vie with one another in the search for the truth, but not for a single final answer. (Audio, 53 minutes.)   ..read more

At this time of year, observant Jews are arranging, usually via their rabbis, to sell their hametz (leavened and fermented grains) to non-Jews, in order avoid violating the biblical prohibition on owning such products during Passover. Nathan Oman, a Mormon legal scholar, comments on his experience of being the designated purchaser: In a lovely spring garden in suburban Philadelphia, I handed cash and a handkerchief to my friend’s rabbi. It was the first time that I, an observant Latter-day Saint (Mormon), had ever purchased whiskey. (Latter-day Saints are prohibited from consuming alcohol, alt ..read more

The truth of the tale of Hillel and the “Hillel sandwich ..read more

There is little doubt that if Hizballah had participated more intensively in Saturday’s attack, Israeli air defenses would have been pushed past their limits, and far more damage would have been done. Daniel Byman and Kenneth Pollack, trying to look at things from Tehran’s perspective, see this as an important sign of caution—but caution that shouldn’t be exaggerated: Iran is well aware of the extent and capability of Israel’s air defenses. The scale of the strike was almost certainly designed to enable at least some of the attacking munitions to penetrate those defenses and cause some degree ..read more

At a campaign rally for Donald Trump last weekend, a group of attendees started shouting “genocide Joe,” an epithet that radical leftists have been hurling at President Biden because of his support for Israel. The former president, upon hearing the shouts, said, “They’re not wrong.” It is, of course, impossible to know if Trump understood the implications. But this is not the only statement he has made recently that appears at odds with his pro-Israel record while in office. Seth Mandel, remarking on comments Trump made previously, takes a closer look: Trump . . . has an obnoxious habit of dee ..read more

Among campus activists, the word “Zionist” has simply come to be an insult, while in the Middle East it serves as a synonym for “Israeli” for those whose antipathy is so great that they refuse to pronounce the hated country’s name. For others still, it is nothing but a codeword for Jew. And for most American Jews, Zionism means support for Israel, and “anti-Zionism” the view that Israel should be dismantled or destroyed, that the country is a unique source of evil in the world. But when the term first emerged at the end of the 19th century, it referred to a specific ideology, or, more accurate ..read more

Thanks to Hamas’s policy of deliberately embedding its military infrastructure amid and beneath civilian areas, the current war has taken a serious toll on the Gaza Strip’s many archaeological sites. The Times of Israel reports: While Israel has an army of archaeologists who have unearthed an impressive number of ancient treasures, Gaza remains relatively untouched by the trowel despite a rich past stretching back thousands of years. The only sheltered natural harbor between the Sinai and Lebanon, Gaza has been a crossroads of civilizations for centuries. A pivot point between Africa and Asia ..read more

The Passover seder has its origins in the ritual meal described in the Pentateuch, in which families consume the meat of the paschal sacrifice together with matzah and bitter herbs. In the text of the Haggadah itself, there are a few reminders that the entire seder is, in the absence of the Temple, nothing more than an imitation of that sacrifice. And that leads Yosef Lindell to ask a question: why did the authors of the Haggadah choose to focus on the retelling of the story of the Exodus rather than on the details of the paschal offering? An alternative view, Lindell observes, is actually dis ..read more