Hamas’s New Strategy Is Working, and Israel Must Act Swiftly to Stop It
Calm in Gaza combined with attacks from the West Bank.
December 24, 2021
Joan Didion, in Memoriam
A tribute to a “splendid writer.”
The American novelist and essayist Joan Didion died yesterday, just a few weeks after her eighty-seventh birthday. In 1976, the great political scientist James Q. Wilson reviewed her most recent collection of essays—titled The White Album after its first essay, which discusses the Beatles—in Commentary. He praises her as a “splendid writer” who stood apart from her own times, in ways that make her even more unusual in 2021, beginning with the way her work resists pigeonholing into political categories:
December 24, 2021
Washington Needs to Do a Better Job Explaining Its War on al-Qaeda to the American People
Reports of civilian casualties come without context—because the Pentagon isn’t providing it.
Could Bangladesh Join Other Muslim Countries in Breaking the Taboo on Relations with Israel?
The Jewish state was one of few to support it during its war of independence.
Joan Didion, in Memoriam
A tribute to a “splendid writer.”
In Vienna, the Rothschilds Are Getting Their Due
A Jewish success story—even if they never controlled the weather or created space lasers.