The Biden administration announced on Wednesday that it imposed new sanctions on Iranian officials responsible for the regime’s crackdown on the “woman, life, freedom” protests in the wake of the killing of Mahsa Amini in 2022.

Bradley Smith, the acting under secretary of the treasury for terrorism and financial intelligence, marked the Sept. 16 anniversary of Amini’s death in announcing the sanctions.

“Two years have now passed since Mahsa Amini’s tragic death in the custody of Iran’s so-called ‘morality police,’ and, despite the Iranian people’s peaceful calls for reform, Iran’s leaders have doubled down on the regime’s well-worn tactics of violence and coercion,” Smith said.

Amini was arrested by the morality police for “improperly” wearing her hijab, the head covering women in Iran are legally obligated to wear. Despite eyewitness accounts that she was beaten in custody by the police, the Islamic Republic claims that Amini, 22, died of a heart attack.

Her death sparked mass protests across Iran under the slogan “woman, life, freedom” that prompted a violent regime crackdown.

The U.S. Treasury Department announcement includes examples of the human-rights abuses carried out by the 12 sanctioned Iranian officials as part of the regime’s efforts to crush dissent.

“Alireza Babaei Farsani has acted as the director-general of Isfahan Province prisons since June 2021,” the announcement states. “In December 2022, it was revealed the Iranian rapper Toomaj Salehi had been subjected to torture or other ill-treatment for weeks in Isfahan Central Prison with the goal of forcing him into a televised confession.”

“In Dolatabad Women’s Prison, also in Isfahan province, prison officials have tasked inmates with torturing and harassing other prisoners, particularly those incarcerated for political offenses,” it adds. “Prison leadership has similarly engaged in systematic corruption and sexual violence, including the prostituting of inmates.”

Other newly sanctioned Iranian officials include an intelligence officer accused of having ties to Hezbollah and overseeing Iran’s efforts to assassinate Iranian dissidents abroad, including a plot to bomb a gathering of dissidents in France.

After nearly a year of suffering and grievous losses, most Israelis and Palestinian Arabs will likely observe the anniversary of the war started by Hamas on Oct. 7 with sorrow. But not everyone. An interview The New York Times conducted with Khaled Mashaal, the head of Hamas’s “political wing,” in his luxurious living quarters in Doha, Qatar, revealed he thinks the war has gone just fine.

As the Times put it, Mashaal thinks that Hamas is “winning the war” and is confident that the genocidal Islamist organization will, despite the battering it has received from the Israel Defense Forces, play a “decisive” role in Gaza in the future.

It takes an extraordinary amount of chutzpah to sit in a comfortable place of exile where you are protected by Qatar—an ally of Iran and Hamas—while the Gulf State also pretends to be friendly with the United States. It’s odd for a “political” leader to be so blithe about a conflict that has, despite the inflated statistics of civilian casualties in the Gaza Strip produced by Hamas, certainly inflicted tremendous harm on his own people. By hiding from the IDF in a warren of tunnels the size of the New York subway system underneath civilian homes, they set in motion a confrontation that guaranteed that much of the Strip would be destroyed. And Hamas itself has been severely hurt. Reportedly, 17,000 operatives have been killed, and all of its organized military formations are no longer combat-effective. The same is true of its ability to send long-range missiles into Israel.

Survival equals a Hamas victory

By any normal definition of victory or defeat, it’s hard to argue that in the aftermath of its orgy of mass murder, rape, torture, kidnappings and wanton destruction in Israel on Oct. 7, Hamas hasn't been beaten.

But Mashaal disagrees, and it’s hard to find fault in his reasoning.

While most of us have understandably focused on the fighting in Gaza as well as the way Hezbollah terrorists have been able to essentially de-populate a portion of northern Israel with its indiscriminate fire on civilians, one of the key fronts in this war is not in the Middle East. It’s in the United States.

Despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of Americans support Israel and oppose Hamas, the political battle over the war in Gaza has been going pretty much the way the terrorists wanted it to. That’s reflected in Mashaal’s confidence, as well as Hamas’s negotiating tactics and its strategy in Gaza. After Oct. 7, the terrorists have been doing nothing but playing for time. And they expected that the time they needed to outlast the Israeli offensive would be provided to them by Israel’s closest ally.

Biden’s flip-flops helped Hamas

At first, it seemed as if their bet would not pay off. President Joe Biden’s initial response to the Oct. 7 massacre was to join Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in saying that the only proper response to this atrocious crime was for Hamas to be “eliminated.” But almost as soon as the words were out of his mouth, Biden began to slowly back away from that position.

Over the next several months as Israel’s counter-offensive into Gaza began, the United States played a double game. On the one hand, Washington continued to supply Jerusalem with munitions badly needed by the IDF; eventually, however, it was reported that the Pentagon slow-walked its delivery to maintain leverage over the Israelis. While America was playing the faithful ally in one respect, Biden and his administration were soon singing a different tune about the war.

Biden was heavily influenced by the open revolt against a pro-Israel policy from lower-level administrators and congressional staffers. With the Democrats’ left-wing base similarly outraged by his initial position of stalwart backing for Israel and the war on Hamas, he realized that it might imperil his chances of re-election. As a result, statements about the war soon were more about its impact on the Palestinians rather than the need to eliminate the terrorists who committed the largest mass slaughter of Jews since World War II and the Holocaust.

This tilt to the left would escalate as the presidential campaign began in early 2024, with gestures from Biden intended to appease the pro-Hamas antisemitic voters in Arab-American strongholds like Dearborn, Mich., as well as woke left-wing activists who falsely label Israel a “settler/colonialist” and “apartheid” state. Rather than push back against the left’s demand for an immediate ceasefire that would essentially save Hamas, the administration began echoing it and pushing for a deal that would end the war at virtually any price, even if it didn’t result in freedom for all of the Israeli hostages still held by Hamas.

And when Israel forced Hamas’s fighters back into their last enclave in southern Gaza, Biden and Vice President Harris were just as vocal about demanding that Israel not enter Rafah as the antisemitic demonstrators on America’s streets and college campuses.

While the public pressure on Israel was bad, even worse was the duress the administration was employing against Netanyahu behind the scenes as it sought to delay every Israeli effort at finishing off the terrorists.

Administration officials were soon parroting the defeatist line about Hamas being an “idea” that could not be defeated, rather than a terrorist force that could be eliminated. Plenty of “ideas” have been militarily defeated, such as Nazism, which didn’t survive the defeat of Adolf Hitler’s genocidal regime. But to Americans and Israeli liberals, Hamas is regarded as an eternal force. By adopting this position, the opportunity to convince Palestinians to give up their fantasies about Israel’s elimination was thrown away and their century-long war on Zionism prolonged.

Combined with the post-Oct. 7 surge in antisemitism made obvious by the pro-Hamas encampments at elite universities, it gave Hamas every reason not to negotiate seriously for a hostage release deal. As Mashaal told the Times, Hamas viewed all of this as encouragement for its plan to simply hunker down in its remaining tunnel strongholds, and hold out until U.S. and international pressure—heightened by the anti-Israel bias of the mainstream media—forced Israel to stand down and allow the Islamists to emerge as the victor in the war.

Demoralizing the Israelis

It must be recognized that a key element in the Biden administration’s efforts was the fact that, as the Times story also noted, many in the leadership of the IDF and Israeli security establishment had adopted similarly defeatist stands about dealing with Hamas.

The conduct of the military leadership—both before and after Oct. 7—will be a subject for formal investigations and then historical inquiry for many decades. Suffice it to say that this attitude about Hamas seems very much a product of the same thinking that left the country unprepared for the attacks that Shabbat morning and then needing weeks before it could initiate an attack on the perpetrators.

It should be noted that Netanyahu bears responsibility for these failures as the head of the government. But the military leadership should not be shielded from the same opprobrium because of the respect their uniforms and records inspire. As I’ve heard from so many Israelis in the last year, if the war has not always gone as well as it should have, it was always the fault of the generals, not the rank-and-file soldiers and lower-level officers who have fought bravely and often sacrificed their lives in order to limit Palestinian casualties.

While Israelis have every right to protest against their government even in wartime, Hamas also views the unrest inside the Jewish state as an asset. The families of the remaining hostages and Netanyahu’s political opposition now seek to pressure him to give up the war and sign a ceasefire agreement, even if it means essentially handing Gaza back to Hamas and ensuring a repeat of the horrors of Oct. 7. I understand why some feel that way for a number of different reasons, but the fact remains that Hamas is counting on that sentiment.

Claiming U.S. ‘recognition’

But above all, Hamas views American pressure on Israel as its ace in the hole. As Mashaal pointed out, the way that the hostage negotiations have been handled by Washington has amounted to American “recognition” of Hamas as a diplomatic partner as opposed to a despised and outlawed terrorist organization. He’s right about that.

While it’s not clear just how closely they are observing the presidential election or counting on one outcome over another, they obviously prefer Harris’s stand in favor of an “immediate ceasefire” to former President Donald Trump’s comments, which amount to a green light to Israel to “finish the job” of eliminating the terrorists.

Hamas’s military position inside Gaza is not completely eliminated, but it is a shadow of its pre-October self. And there are even reports now starting to circulate about Gazans drawing some obvious conclusions about the high cost of letting Hamas lead them into disaster after disaster. Even as Israel’s focus is increasingly turning towards its northern border and the imperative to stop the Hezbollah fire that has depopulated a large area in the direct line of terrorist fire, the need to continue the work of demolishing tunnels and rooting out remaining Hamas elements is not over. It may take years—something that discourages Israelis, and that infuriates Biden and Harris. But the notion that there is any realistic alternative to continue fighting that would ensure Israeli security—whether in the form of a ceasefire/surrender or bringing international forces into Gaza to stop Hamas—is a pipe dream.

The reality of Palestinian politics

As the Times article makes clear, Hamas will never budge from its demands that Israel hand back Gaza to them. And as long as they are useful to their cause, they will hold onto many of the hostages, despite the belief among some Israelis that it is Netanyahu’s stubbornness or political ambition that is the obstacle to their freedom. Moreover, Hamas leaders are right to believe, despite the understandable anger in Gaza, that the basic equation of Palestinian politics remains unchanged. Over the last century, Palestinian groups and leaders have always gained credibility primarily by shedding Jewish blood. Hamas thinks that it will eventually reap a great benefit from the atrocities of Oct. 7 in the form of broad support that will enable it to topple and replace Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah Party in Judea and Samaria as well as Gaza. All they have to do to cash in on that is to survive the war, and they think they’ve found the formula to enable them to do just that.

If left to carry out its tasks without foreign interference, the IDF will eventually eliminate Hamas, though that task will not be accomplished easily or quickly. It can certainly prevent it from returning to power in Gaza, thus ensuring that its reign of terror over Israel as well as Palestinians is over. Still, Mashaal and the rest of the terrorist group are counting on feckless American politicians, ideologically motivated leftist demonstrators and political activists, a media that is always prepared to demonize Israeli efforts at self-defense, as well as war-weariness and anguish about the hostages inside Israel to guarantee their survival. We may hope that they are wrong about that, but it’s easy to understand why the terrorist leader is confident that he can outlast the Israelis … with American help.

Jonathan S. Tobin is editor-in-chief of JNS (Jewish News Syndicate). Follow him @jonathans_tobin.

Light has always been a metaphor for spirituality, truth, insight and Godly revelation. To “see the light” is a well-worn cliché, but one that only reaffirms how correct it is.

In this week’s Torah reading, Ki Tavo, we have the chilling rebuke where Moses warns the Israelites that if they do not heed the words of God and follow His way of life, they will bring upon themselves the most dreadful curses. This is always read shortly before Rosh Hashanah to sober us up and inspire us to reflect and introspect before the solemn Days of Judgment ahead.

One of the curious curses in the rebuke is this: “And you shall grope in broad daylight as the blind man gropes in the thick darkness” (Deuteronomy 28:29).

The Talmud (Megillah 24b) records a debate over whether a blind man may recite the blessings over light if he doesn’t really benefit from the light. In the discussion, Rabbi Yosei confessed that all his life he was puzzled by the above verse from Deuteronomy.

“What difference is there to the blind man between light and darkness?” he asked. Does he grope in the darkness more than during daylight hours?

Then Rabbi Yosei shared the moment when he himself “saw the light.”

“Until one time, it happened that I encountered a blind man walking at night, holding a torch in his hand. And I asked him, ‘My son, why do you need a torch?’ And he answered me, ‘When I have the torch in my hand people see me, and they help me avoid the ditches, thorns and prickly shrubs.’ ”

How well do these lines speak to our current situation? It is, indeed, a terrible curse when people grope in the darkness, unable to “see the light” of truth and justice, and when they cannot distinguish between good and evil, right and wrong.

Our world has been plunged into a very thick darkness. Daylight, too, has become darkness. Those who should be seers are blind and grope even in broad daylight. In fact, it is so dark that even the blind man needs to carry a torch!

We are living in such an unprecedented era of darkness when on the most intelligent and enlightened university campuses, mass murder is celebrated and pure evil masquerades as good. What terrible darkness are we experiencing when people cannot distinguish between heroes and hitmen, saints and sinners, defenders and destroyers.

What solution is there? Well, on the ground, there is no choice but to finish the job and restore security to our people, south, north and center. But on a spiritual level, we must carry the torch. We must insist on continuing to be an ohr l'goyim, a light unto the nations.

The analogy has been adapted from the Talmudic expression of “day workers.” Anan poalo dyemoma anan! We are day workers! Day is synonymous with light. We may be blind to the Divine light in the world, but if we hold the torch people will get the message. When we hold the flame of Torah, virtue and morality high, then the world will take notice. There is only one way to banish the darkness of our world, and that is by kindling more and more light. Only with light. We cannot sweep away the darkness; we can only light a candle, a flame, a torch, a generator, a tower of light!

On the positive side, we have always believed that there has got to be some deeper meaning to all our pain and suffering. Indeed, a new light is forming, a new era; finally, the final redemption must be very near.

That’s why I fully agree with singer Ishay Ribo, who said this week to a full crowd in New York’s Madison Square Garden, “I believe, and I think everyone else believes in their heart, that everything the Nation of Israel is experiencing now cannot be in vain. The pain and the tears that have fallen without end will cause redemption to grow and a new world to flourish. When this happens, soon, with God’s help, we cannot imagine how much good there will be.”

This week’s rebuke ends abruptly with the words, Eileh Divrei haBrit, these are the words of the covenant. God’s covenant with the Jewish people is eternal. Today, we may be groping through the darkness and feel confounded by the curses, but the infinite light of God will ultimately shine, and His covenant will be revealed for all to see.

Please God, may it be very soon indeed.

Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, announced on Wednesday that his office reached an agreement with Christopher Brown, 23, to plead guilty “for possessing a firearm as part of a planned terror attack on the New York Jewish community in 2022.”

Brown pleaded guilty in New York State Supreme Court to a count of criminal possession of a weapon in the second degree as a crime of terrorism, Bragg’s office said. It added that Brown is slated to be sentenced on Nov. 13 “to a promised sentence of 10 years in state prison, followed by five years post-release supervision.”

“Christopher Brown has been held accountable for his plan to commit a violent, antisemitic terrorist attack,” Bragg stated. “Thankfully, we were able to intervene and prevent him from following through.”

“I want Manhattan’s Jewish community to know that we are remaining extremely vigilant against threats of violence during this time of rising antisemitism, and our terrorism and hate-crimes units are continuing to conduct proactive investigations to keep everyone safe,” he added.

Brown admitted in the plea agreement that he wrote antisemitic posts on social media, including “God wants me to shoot up a synagogue and die” and “gonna ask a priest if I should become a husband or shoot up a synagogue and die,” in November 2022. He also “used social media to express support for Nazi ideology and accelerationism, a form of racially and ethnically motivated extremism,” per Bragg’s office.

He also “discussed getting tattoos of Nazi insignia, including a swastika on his heart,” the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office stated, and “expressed support for and a desire to emulate Brenton Tarrant, who attacked two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 2019.”

When officers arrested Brown on Nov. 18, 2022, at Penn Station in New York City, he had a knife, a swastika armband and a ski mask in his backpack. He had purchased a loaded gun in Pennsylvania for $650, the DA’s office said.

Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana inaugurated Israel’s newly reopened embassy in Paraguay on Wednesday, ahead of the Latin American country’s planned relocation of its embassy to Jerusalem later this year.

The sequence of events was an unflinching boost of support for Israel in Latin America at a time when the Jewish state has been facing international opprobrium over the nearly year-old war in the Gaza Strip triggered by the Hamas terrorist attacks on Oct. 7.

Ohana, who is also traveling to neighboring Argentina, addressed the Paraguayan parliament on Tuesday in the presence of bereaved families, becoming the second only Israeli parliamentary speaker to be afforded such an honor in Latin America since the establishment of the modern State of Israel in 1948.

Paraguayan Foreign Minister Rubén Ramírez Lezcano told JNS last week that the Latin American country will open its embassy in Jerusalem by the end of 2024. He added that preparations were underway for a state visit by Paraguayan President Santiago Peña to Israel this fall for the embassy inauguration.

Holding a picture of murdered hostage Ori Danino, 25, as his father, Elhanan, sat in the room, Ohana told the Paraguayan parliament: “Ori is not just Elhanan’s son. These are our children.”

He urged the international community to pressure Hamas to release the approximately 100 hostages still being held in Gaza.

“Mr. Speaker, when you return to your country with your delegation, give a message from us to the parents of the victims and the hostages: You are not alone,” says Ohana’s Paraguayan counterpart, Raúl Luís Latorre Martinez.

“We support you. Even if we are the only ones to support you, we will support you and stand by our brother—Israel.”

The two parliaments also signed a Memorandum of Understanding for cooperation, and Martinez gave Ohana Paraguay’s top congressional award.

Paraguay first moved its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in 2018, following then-President Donald Trump’s lead and becoming the third country to do so after the United States and Guatemala.

Months later, the embassy was returned to Tel Aviv, setting off a diplomatic crisis with Israel. The surprise decision led Israel to shutter its embassy in Asunción, which is now being reopened.

Long history of ties to the Jewish state

During his election campaign last year, Peña pledged that he would return the embassy to Jerusalem.

“The State of Israel recognizes Jerusalem as its capital,” he said. “The seat of the parliament is in Jerusalem, the president is in Jerusalem. So who are we to question where they establish their own capital?”

Landlocked Paraguay has a long history of friendship with Israel, dating back to its vote for the establishment of the Jewish state at the United Nations in 1947.

Five countries currently have their embassies in Israel’s capital: the United States, Guatemala, Honduras, Kosovo and Papua New Guinea. All of the other countries that have ties with Israel maintain their embassies in Tel Aviv or in Tel Aviv suburbs due to the political sensitivities over the holy city.

Trump’s landmark decision to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem in 2018 set the stage for other countries to follow suit in the following years, with additional nations expected to make similar announcements after a delay caused by the war against Hamas.

On Friday, the Knesset speaker will visit Argentina and meet with Javier Milei, who has also pledged to move his embassy to Jerusalem.

The events this week in Lebanon sound like they were taken out of a James Bond movie, as sabotaged pagers used by Hezbollah exploded simultaneously across the country, injuring some 3,000 people, the vast majority of whom were members of the terror organization.

Experts believe that Israeli security apparatuses were able to access Hezbollah’s supply chain, plant the explosives and simply wait for an opportune time to detonate the devices remotely. This represents an unprecedented breach of Hezbollah’s communication system and a reminder of Israel’s advanced technological capabilities, which the terror group is well aware of. Just a few months ago, Hassan Nasrallah, its secretary-general, warned his men not to use cell phones as he believed that Israel’s ability to monitor cellular communications is the primary way it has been able to accurately target and assassinate many Hezbollah members in the past months.

It appears that Israel had access to more than just communication devices. Its decision to detonate the sabotaged pager devices was a response to Hezbollah’s attempt to assassinate the former Israel Defense Forces chief of staff Aviv Kochavi, foiled just days ago. Hezbollah, on its part, was quick to point to Israel as the perpetrator of the large-scale attack and vowed to retaliate. 

As the ball is now in Hezbollah’s court, Nasrallah is the man to follow. The long-standing head of Iran’s crown jewel proxy is known for his deep understanding of Israel’s decision-making calculations. He now faces one of the most crucial decisions of his career. 

Nasrallah has said for months that Hezbollah is not interested in escalating the ongoing fighting with Israel to an all-out war. He will now need to come up with a retaliation to answer a mixture of conditions regarding the nature of the target, its geographic location and the appropriate weapon to hit it with—in a way that will send Israel a fierce message without creating a deterioration in the situation.

Finding this appropriate “Goldilocks” retaliation is increasingly tricky as Hezbollah finds itself confronting an Israeli rival that is less and less willing to contain such attacks. The Israeli government faces rising domestic pressure from both the public and the military command to take a much more aggressive approach against Hezbollah’s attacks on northern Israel. The government’s recent decision to formally include the return of civilians to their homes in the north as a war objective should also be seen as a sign of its new focus. 

Nasrallah should be closely watching Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who is traditionally seen as risk-aversive. Netanyahu’s recent aggressive approach towards the United States and his rejection of any potential diplomatic attempt to reach a ceasefire in Gaza and Lebanon reflect his intentions to continue the military campaign despite the risk of further escalation and widening of the war.

Nonetheless, many analysts believe Israel will heed Washington’s call not to escalate the conflict. Still, Nasrallah must consider that the domestic political pressures on Netanyahu, along with his tense relations with Washington, could lead him to order to widen the campaign against Hezbollah.

Furthermore, Nasrallah should consider the possibility that due to the upcoming presidential election in the United States, Israel might see the current timing as an opportunity to attack Hezbollah, believing that the Democrats need to secure the Jewish vote which will force Washington to stand by Israel.

The combination of Israel’s intelligence superiority, as demonstrated in the “pagers attack” (possibly the first of many), the rising domestic pressure to deal with Hezbollah “once and for all,” and the possibility of a weakened American restraining factor on the Israeli decision-makers puts Nasrallah on the spot—as one step in the wrong direction could cost Hezbollah, and Lebanon as a whole, dearly.

After the 2006 war with Israel, Nasrallah later admitted that had he known the attack he had authorized on the Israeli border would lead to an all-out war, he would never have approved it. Let us hope that he remembers that lesson.

The battle with bureaucracy continues for a project to construct an education complex to teach as many as 2,500 Orthodox Jews.

The Jackson Township Planning Board in New Jersey rejected a proposal by 394 Chandler Holdings to build four private Jewish schools. As such, the company’s attorney, Donna Jennings, announced plans to sue.

The Aug. 19 decision resulted from a disagreement over whether the government should classify a road to the property as public or private. The latter designation would require future approval from the township council for exemptions on local zoning laws.

The board requested time to confer with the township council on resolving the road dispute, an extension Jennings opposed. In response, the board voted to reject the proposal without prejudice, which enables a resubmission of the application for another chance to get approval.

Jennings called the board’s decision “absolutely ridiculous.” 

“I’ve never had a town tell me to go to another governmental entity first and then come back,” she said.

The construction project has taken time to secure approval; the developer applied in November 2022.

The Jewish state has not claimed responsibility for an incident, in which some 2,700 pagers belonging to Hezbollah terrorists exploded in Lebanon and Syria earlier this week. But critics of Israel accused it of violating international law and of being responsible for the attack.

“Israel’s pager attack in Lebanon detonated thousands of handheld devices across of a slew of public spaces, seriously injuring and killing innocent civilians,” stated Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), a member of the so-called “squad” and frequent Israel critic.

“This attack clearly and unequivocally violates international humanitarian law and undermines U.S. efforts to prevent a wider conflict,” Ocasio-Cortez stated. “Congress needs a full accounting of the attack, including an answer from the State Department as to whether any U.S. assistance went into the development or deployment of this technology.”

The Council on American-Islamic Relations, which was among the organizations that blamed Israel for being attacked on Oct. 7, called for the Biden administration “to condemn the Israeli government for killing children and maiming numerous civilians in Lebanon by detonating bombs reportedly placed in pagers without any regard for innocent life.” 

“The Israeli government reportedly detonated explosives contained in pagers in Lebanon. Two children and a medical worker are reportedly among the victims of the attack,” CAIR said. “The attack could lead to a spread and escalation of the conflict, analysts say.” 

It added that the attack was an Israeli “brazen and wanton act of state terrorism that has killed at least two children and maimed countless people who had nothing to do with the cross-border war.” 

If the attack targeted 2,700 people with ties to Hezbollah, a U.S.-designated terror organization, and struck three additional civilians, that would mean that the operation had about a 99.89% effective rate of targeting terrorists compared to civilians.

“If Israel was responsible, then on available information these seem to be incredibly precise. Rules on targeting are principally necessity, distinction and proportionality,” Natasha Hausdorff, a barrister in the United Kingdom and legal director of UK Lawyers for Israel, told JNS.

“It is hard to imagine a better means of targeting Hezbollah operatives, whoever is behind the exploding devices,” Hausdorff said. “I would ask these individuals which international law they claim was violated.”

David May, the research manager and a senior research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told JNS that "reportedly, there were explosives within thousands of pagers Hezbollah ordered for its key operatives. These were Hezbollah pagers, not devices for the general public. Beyond that, very few civilians carry pagers in the year 2024, so claims that this operation was indiscriminate are disingenuous."

"Hiding explosives in Hezbollah’s personal devices is the best way to target terrorists who hide among civilians," May said. "This was a pinpoint operation compared to modern urban warfare. Many of the critics of this operation tailor their analysis to their presupposition that Israel is evil and guilty."

"Hezbollah launched the current round of hostilities on Oct. 8 while Israel was still clearing Hamas fighters out of southern Israel," he added. "The Iran-backed terrorist group has since launched more than 8,500 rockets at Israel. It doesn’t get to start a war and demand that Israel conduct it as an eye-for-an-eye campaign."

'Outrage is illogical'

Erielle Azerrad, an associate at Holtzman Vogel and a senior fellow at the Center for the Middle East and International Law at George Mason University’s Scalia Law School, told JNS that the "outrage is illogical."

"You would be hard-pressed to design a more targeted campaign designed to reach exclusively terrorists and their communication networks," she said. "Under the law of armed conflict, proportionality is one of the crucial considerations in order to prevent as many tragic civilian deaths as possible."

The terrorist-to-civilian ratio in this instance "is almost unheard of," according Azerrad. "Instead of applauding Israel’s ingenuity, the international community has turned terrorism on its head—by now defining it as eliminating terrorists," she added.

“Let’s be clear—in its strategic attack on Hezbollah, Israel used innovative methods to carry out a precise military operation, maximizing the elimination of terrorists while minimizing harm to civilians by targeting military communication devices,” stated Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.).

“Iran’s ambassador must explain why he had a Hezbollah military communication device, given Iran’s long history of using its ‘diplomats’ to carry out terror. This includes a plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States and target dissidents abroad, especially in Europe,” Sherman stated. “In war, it’s impossible to fully prevent harm to civilians—especially when Hezbollah operates in Beirut’s densest civilian areas.”

“Some impacted by this operation may be civilians due to Hezbollah’s use of civilians as human shields and their use of soldiers” who are 18, he added.

For decades, Jewish Republicans have talked about a realignment whereby Jews will abandon their traditional, almost reflexive support for the Democratic Party and embrace the Republican Party. Historically, Jewish voters have leaned heavily Democratic due to the party’s association with liberal values, which resonate with most Jews who identify as liberal or progressive. Policy Jews say that Israel is not the most critical issue, but they are influenced if one candidate is perceived as hostile—as was the case, for example, with Jimmy Carter. He would have never become president if one in nine New York Jews had voted for Gerald Ford.

Will the Jewish vote make any difference in the outcome in 2024?

Jews make up a little more than 2% of the population but vote in disproportionate numbers. In a close election, every vote counts; so Jewish votes matter, but the same is true of every other constituency. A change of a few percentage points towards one candidate or another among black or Hispanic voters is much more meaningful than the same shift among Jews.

Let’s play a hypothetical game to see how the presidential election might play out.

First, what do we know about Jewish voters? The American Jewish Committee has been conducting surveys for years and has the most reliable data. They have found that about 48% of Jews identify as liberals, 59% as progressives, about one-third as moderates and 20% as conservatives. Nearly half are Reform or Conservative, 29% are secular, and only 8% are Orthodox. We don’t know a lot about Jews of color; some may assume they lean liberal, but that may not be the case for different constituencies.

In 2020, the Jewish vote favored Joe Biden over Donald Trump by 68% to 30%. That was the lowest total for a Democrat since Michael Dukakis received 64% in 1988 to George H.W. Bush’s 35%. Bush did better than the average Republican (26%) because Jews thought that he would continue the pro-Israel policies of Ronald Reagan. He didn’t and was punished when he ran for re-election and received only 11% of the Jewish vote to Bill Clinton’s 80%.

If Jewish voters apply similar logic and assume that Kamala Harris will continue Biden’s policies—and her campaign remarks reflect them—it would not be surprising if she fared as bad or worse than the president did in 2020. According to a Pew survey, that appears to be the case, as only 65% of Jews said they would support Harris. That is the same share of the Jewish vote that George McGovern got when Reagan routed him. The 34% that favored Trump is consistent with a Fox News poll that found 33% of Jews voted Republican in the midterms.

The Jewish Democratic Council of America has the race at 72% to 25% in a two-way race, but Harris drops to 68% in a five-way vote. The only Democrat to win with fewer Jewish votes than the lower figure was Woodrow Wilson in 1916. You should be skeptical of any statistics from Republican or Democratic sources, but even the higher figure would not guarantee that Harris could win, as John Kerry and Al Gore both lost with 76% and 79% of the Jewish vote, respectively.

The state everyone is talking about: Pennsylvania

We know that the Jews most likely to vote Republican are Orthodox. If they made up the bulk of Trump voters, they would likely have no impact on the race because most do not live in any of the seven swing states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. A significant percentage, if not most, Orthodox Jews live in New York, Florida, California, New Jersey and Maryland. Trump is expected to win Florida but will lose the rest, which are solidly Democratic, so polls showing the Jewish vote shifting towards Trump in places like New York are meaningless for the presidential race.

On the other hand, since the Orthodox comprise a tiny fraction of the Jewish community, Trump must be attracting moderates and liberals if he is winning one-third of the vote.

Let’s play a hypothetical game by looking at the 2020 Jewish vote and how it would change if the Pew numbers were correct. We don’t know the Orthodox population by state or the Jewish vote by state, so we will assume that Trump would get 35% in each state. More Jews than average register to vote, but we’ll use the 72% figure for white non-Hispanic voters. Finally, turnout for Jews is historically 85%.

Trump will benefit from the increase in the Jewish population in all but one state. He picks up from 1,024 votes in Wisconsin to 13,177 in Pennsylvania. He won North Carolina in 2020 and would pick up 2,048 more Jewish votes. Given the relatively large margins of victory compared to the slight increase in Trump’s vote share, Jews are unlikely to have as much impact in Michigan, Nevada or Wisconsin. Trump would, however, reduce the margin he lost in Arizona and Georgia to less than 6,000 votes. In Pennsylvania—the state everyone is talking about—his deficit would be less than 68,000.

The Republican Jewish Coalition, which reportedly allocated up to $15 million for Jewish voter outreach in the swing states, claims the vote there is 50-50. Again, take this with a grain of salt, but if that is true, based on the 2020 results, Trump would have enough votes to win Arizona and Georgia, which would likely give him the presidency. The margin he would have to make up in Wisconsin would be less than 17,000. He would need less than 28,000 additional votes to win Pennsylvania.

This is all speculative but gives a sense of the impact the Jewish vote could have on Trump’s chances to return to the White House. Change the assumptions, and the outcome will be different. The Jewish vote won’t be the same in every state. Other factors, such as age, gender and income can make a difference in how Jews vote.

Harris’s campaign has only gotten started, so she has time to win more Jewish votes, but she is limited in what she can do because Biden’s policy towards Israel will continue to influence Jews’ decisions, as will their concerns about the far-left in the Democratic Party that has become increasingly anti-Israel and sometimes antisemitic. Harris is also scared that reassuring Jews will alienate progressives and the people who voted uncommitted in the Democratic primary to show their dissatisfaction with Biden’s support of Israel. She is particularly worried about losing Michigan because of the Arab Americans concentrated there who are angry with Biden. Her campaign is trying to win over Nikki Haley’s voters, which likely included some Jews, and that could potentially help improve her numbers.

Trump’s projected share of the Jewish vote is well above the average for Republicans since 1968. He isn’t likely to pick up too many additional Jewish votes unless Harris makes a serious misstep or Biden becomes more critical of Israel. Trump could lose votes if he continues to associate with conspiracy theorists and antisemites like Laura Loomer.

The Jewish vote could have more influence on local races. Jewish Insider’s Josh Kraushaar noted, for example, that the sizeable Maryland Jewish community could influence the outcome of the Senate race between former Republican Gov. Larry Hogan and Democrat Angela Alsobrooks. A Hogan victory might help Republicans take control of the Senate. Jewish constituencies could also affect close House races. They already have in defeating (with the help of AIPAC money) Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.), who was one of the most anti-Israel Democrats.

Trump’s presidency was marked by strong pro-Israel stances, a factor that endeared him to a segment of the Jewish electorate. Conversely, Harris, as vice president under Biden, will be judged largely based on the Biden administration’s policies, which many Jews have criticized. If Harris is perceived as perpetuating Biden’s approach, it could translate into the significant decline in Jewish support shown in the Pew survey.

Democrats have long taken the Jewish vote for granted and Republicans have written it off, but in this nail-biter of an election, it behooves both Harris and Trump to fight for every one of them.