Secretary of State Antony Blinken is celebrating the fact that Hamas said it welcomed a UN Security Council resolution Monday endorsing the Biden plan (falsely described as the Israeli plan) for a ceasefire-hostage deal in Gaza.
Hamas accepted nothing. It simply pocketed the concessions in the proposal, which by the Biden administration's own admission was "virtually identical" to Hamas's own proposals, and demanded the thing it still really wants: victory.
The resolution calls for Israel to leave Gaza; for Gaza to return to the territorial status quo ante; for outside money to rebuild Gaza; etc. Notably, it does not call for Hamas to be ousted or disarmed. That's the new starting point for a deal.
What Hamas wants is for the deal also to include an explicit Israeli commitment not to return to war to destroy the terrorist organization. There's no way Israel will agree to that. That's why, for months, I've been saying a deal is impossible.
Meanwhile, Blinken is giving away the store. The correct U.S. posture should be: give up the hostages, and maybe we'll let the leaders of Hamas live, in exile. Not this garbage about how nice everyone is going to be, and pretty please.
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- The airstrike on the Venezuelan drug cartel
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This week's Torah portion includes several laws about conduct in civic and personal life, the common theme of which is boundaries -- setting bounds to what one may do at home, at work, and even in the battlefield.
One noteworthy passage concerns Amalek, the evil nation that attacked the Children of Israel as they made their Exodus from slavery to freedom. Deuteronomy 25:17-19 commands Jews to obliterate Amalek's memory.
The South African government accused Israel of genocide on the basis of a story about Amalek in the Book of Samuel, in which King Saul was commanded to wipe out the entire evil Amalekite nation.
Because Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu quoted this week's portion -- "Remember what Amalek did to you" (25:17), the South African government claimed he was commanding soldiers to commit genocide.
It was an absurd and malevolent misreading of the Bible and of Jewish tradition. The commandment, as observed by Jews today, is to remember the evil of Amalek and fight ...
