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      Trump’s Remarks on Hezbollah and Netanyahu Prompt Bipartisan Outcry

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      Republican rivals and the White House were among those to roundly condemn the former president for his characterization of the Lebanese militant group.Former President Donald J. Trump drew scorn from both sides of the political aisle on Thursday for remarks that he made one day earlier criticizing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and referring to Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militant group, as “very smart.”During a speech to his supporters in West Palm Beach, Fla., on Wednesday, he weighed in on the Hamas attacks on Israel, the worst experienced by America’s closest Middle East ally in half a century.Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite group, has clashed with Israeli forces in the days after Hamas fighters from Gaza attacked border areas in southern Israel, intensifying concerns that the country could be drawn into a conflict on a second front.“You know, Hezbollah is very smart,” Mr. Trump said. “They’re all very smart.”He took swipes at Mr. Netanyahu on the “Brian Kilmeade Show,” a Fox News Radio show, broadcast on Thursday, arguing that intelligence lapses by Israel had left it vulnerable to the sweeping attack, kidnappings and slaughter of civilians leading to the war.A broad spectrum of political rivals condemned Mr. Trump on Thursday, including the White House and several of his Republican primary opponents.“Statements like this are dangerous and unhinged,” Andrew Bates, the deputy White House press secretary, said in a statement. “It’s completely lost on us why any American would ever praise an Iran-backed terrorist organization as ‘smart.’ Or have any objection to the United States warning terrorists not to attack Israel.”While filing paperwork on Thursday to appear on the Republican primary ballot in New Hampshire, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who is running a distant second to Mr. Trump in national polls, also admonished his main rival.“You’re not going to find me throwing verbal grenades at Israeli leadership,” said Mr. DeSantis, whose campaign shared a clip Wednesday night of Mr. Trump’s Hezbollah remarks on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.Former Vice President Mike Pence similarly objected to Mr. Trump’s rhetoric, saying that his former boss was sending the wrong message.“Well look, this is no time for the former president or any other American leader to be sending any other message than America stands with Israel,” Mr. Pence said during a radio interview with “New Hampshire Today.”Mr. Pence disputed Mr. Trump’s characterization of Hezbollah and pointed out that Mr. Trump’s compliments to a brutal figure were not new: Mr. Trump referred to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia as a “genius” and “very savvy” after Russia invaded Ukraine last year. And as president, Mr. Trump praised Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, as “very honorable.”“Look, Hezbollah are not smart,” Mr. Pence said on Thursday. “They’re evil, OK.”Gov. J.B. Pritzker of Illinois, a Democrat who is a national advisory board member for President Biden’s re-election campaign, slammed Mr. Trump in a statement on Thursday.“No true friend of Israel, the Jewish people or of peace would praise Hezbollah just days after what President Biden and Jewish leaders have called the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust,” Mr. Pritzker said.In a statement on Thursday, Steven Cheung, a spokesman for the Trump campaign, defended Mr. Trump’s comments. He accused the Biden administration of telegraphing its concerns about the potential for a Hezbollah offensive in northern Israel, and he cited a background briefing that a senior defense official gave to the media on Monday.But the Israeli Army had already been engaged in clashes with armed militants along the country’s volatile northern frontier for several days. On Sunday, the day before the briefing, The Associated Press reported that Hezbollah had fired dozens of rockets and shells at three Israeli positions in a disputed area along Lebanon’s border with the Golan Heights.“Hezbollah has operated there for decades,” Mr. Bates said. “And the United States’ words of deterrence have been welcomed across the board in Israel — unlike some other words that come to mind.”Mr. Trump, who has frequently sought to cast himself as a champion for Israel, maligned Mr. Netanyahu on multiple occasions in recent days.On Wednesday in Florida he said that Israel had in 2020 opted out of participating in the U.S. drone strike that killed Iran’s top security and intelligence commander, Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, who the Pentagon said had been planning attacks on Americans across the region — despite its coordination on the plan.“But I’ll never forget,” Mr. Trump said. “I’ll never forget that Bibi Netanyahu let us down. That was a very terrible thing.”In the “Brian Kilmeade Show” interview, the former president criticized Mr. Netanyahu and Israeli intelligence as being poorly prepared for the attacks by Hamas on Saturday.“Thousands of people knew about it, and they let this slip by,” he said. “That was not a good thing for him or for anybody.”Mr. DeSantis said that Mr. Trump had crossed the line with his attack on Mr. Netanyahu.“We all need to be on the same page,” he said. “Now is not the time to air personal grievances about an Israeli prime minister. Now is the time to support their right to defend themselves to the hilt.”Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota and former Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas, who are also challenging Mr. Trump for the Republican nomination, condemned his remarks as well.“Shame on you, Donald,” Mr. Hutchinson wrote on X. “Your constant compliments to dictators, terrorist groups, and evil-doers are beneath the office you seek and not reflective of the American character.”Speaking to reporters in New Hampshire, Mr. Burgum said that “smart” was not how he would describe Hezbollah or Hamas.“I’d call them barbaric,” he said. “I’d call them inhumane. I’d call it unthinkable. But what Hezbollah and Hamas have done, but I don’t think I’d characterize them in any positive fashion — not when you see this incredible ability to conduct the atrocities that most of us would find as unthinkable and unimaginable.”In an interview on CNN on Thursday, Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor, told the anchor Wolf Blitzer: “Only a fool would make those kinds of comments. Only a fool would give comments that could give aid and comfort to Israel’s adversary in this situation.”While campaigning in New Hampshire on Thursday, Nikki Haley criticized Mr. Trump in response to a question from a voter during a town hall. “I don’t want him hitting Netanyahu,” she said, adding: “Who cares what he thinks about Netanyahu? This is not about that. This is about the people of Israel.”Jazmine Ulloa More

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      Biden’s Stance on Israel Wins Praise From Critics

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      After Donald J. Trump bound himself tightly to the Israeli right, and President Biden approached the divided nation gingerly, a warm presidential embrace has eased years of tension.Not long ago, Donald J. Trump occupied enormous psychological space in Israel and among American Jews: His face draped skyscrapers alongside Benjamin Netanyahu’s during Israeli elections, and his politics drove a wedge between the Democratic Party and the Jews who have long called it their political home.But it is President Biden’s face that now beams from a billboard over the main highway through Tel Aviv, and Mr. Trump’s criticism of Israel’s leaders that has left even Israeli conservatives stunned.The president is suddenly finding warm embraces for his response to the worst terrorist attack in the Jewish State’s history in the most unlikely places.“This will sound surprising, but by and large, the president has shown tremendous support, unwavering support, for Israel at a critical time,” said Matt Brooks, the longtime head of the Republican Jewish Coalition, a group with close institutional ties to the G.O.P. and to some of its biggest donors. “Can we quibble on aspects of policy differences, over Iran’s complicity, for instance? Sure. But by and large, the American people and the international community have seen a president who has stood shoulder to shoulder with Israel.”No less than Mr. Trump’s hawkish former ambassador to Israel, David M. Friedman, wrote online that while he remained a critic of the Biden administration, “the moral, tactical, diplomatic and military support that it has provided Israel over the past few days has been exceptional.”Mr. Biden’s speech condemning the “evil” perpetrated by Hamas that killed more than 1,200 Israelis, his swift offer of military assistance, and the presence of his secretary of state, Antony Blinken, on Israeli soil have all won remarkable plaudits. A vast billboard in Tel Aviv thanks the president for his response. A video circulating on Israeli social media channels placed Mr. Biden’s speech on the terrorist attacks against clips of Hamas atrocities and Holocaust imagery.The moment amounted to a return to the kind of staunch bipartisan bond between Israel and the United States that had been questioned during the Trump administration, as Republicans allied themselves with the Israeli right and some liberal Democrats called for reducing or imposing conditions on foreign aid and military assistance to Israel.Now, as Mr. Biden finds himself plunged into a wartime relationship with Mr. Netanyahu, his strong support has wiped away those tensions, Israeli analysts and officials said.“His speech was remarkable, very emotional. It came at the right time, when the morale in Israel was very low and we’re still digesting the number of casualties,” said Danny Danon, Israel’s former ambassador to the United Nations and chairman of the international branch of Mr. Netanyahu’s party, Likud. “The people of Israel felt that it came from his heart, and we appreciate that.”Attila Somfalvi, a senior political analyst and commentator on Israeli television, was equally effusive. “At a moment when Israelis were shocked, traumatized, and had really lost confidence in themselves and their military and intelligence,” he said in a telephone interview, “President Biden gave us back the feeling that we are not alone, and — maybe more important — that we can walk proudly.”He added that the criticism of Mr. Netanyahu and of Israeli intelligence failures that was leveled by Mr. Trump in a speech on Wednesday had come as a shock to a country that had been broadly supportive of Mr. Trump throughout his administration.Not long ago, former President Donald Trump graced billboards alongside Benjamin Netanyahu during Israeli elections. But now Mr. Trump’s criticism of Israel’s leaders has left even Israeli conservatives stunned.Ahmad Gharabli/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIshay Coen, a religiously conservative journalist, posted a clip of Mr. Trump’s speech on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, writing in Hebrew, “Every Israeli should pray that Biden will continue for a second term.”The warm feelings for Mr. Biden could cool if international support erodes over Israel’s retaliatory attacks in Gaza or if Israeli society splinters over a protracted ground campaign.And Mr. Biden still has staunch critics on the conservative fringes of Jewish society in both Israel and the United States. Morton Klein, head of the right-wing Zionist Organization of America, dismissed the president’s response to the attacks as “just words” and insisted Israelis were not fooled, just traumatized, even if a billboard in Tel Aviv says otherwise.“All that billboard says is ‘We’re scared to death, Mr. America. Please rescue us,’” Mr. Klein said. “That says nothing about Israelis’ support for Biden.”But even some Jewish Republicans openly praised the administration’s response.“Everything he said is extremely positive and the exact things that I would have hoped a president of the United States would say,” said Fred Zeidman, a Texas businessman and major fund-raiser for Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor who is running to challenge Mr. Biden in 2024. “There is nothing I’m going to do to be critical of Joe Biden at this point.”After the Hamas attacks, the president told aides he wanted to join a meeting with Jewish leaders who had been scheduled for a White House meeting on antisemitism before the crisis, according to Nathan J. Diament, executive director for public policy for the Orthodox Union Advocacy Center, one of the largest Orthodox Jewish organizations in the country.Mr. Diament, whose members lean more politically conservative than much of the Jewish American population, compared the meeting to another moment 80 years ago, in 1943, when hundreds of rabbis marched to the White House to plead with Franklin D. Roosevelt to save European Jews from the Nazis. They were denied an audience.“There’s no question that so far, plenty of people who probably did not vote for Joe Biden are very appreciative of what he has said and what he has done,” he said.The shocking bloodshed in Israel has given the Biden administration a chance to reset relations with Israel on a more traditional footing, more in keeping with Mr. Biden’s long years on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee than with the strained periods he has witnessed from the White House.As vice president, Mr. Biden had to contend with the bad blood that opened up between the Netanyahu government and the Obama administration over a nuclear accord with Iran that the prime minister openly tried to torpedo.After four years in which Mr. Trump did virtually everything Mr. Netanyahu asked, including withdrawing from that accord, Mr. Biden’s presidency coincided with the return to power of Mr. Netanyahu and the formation of the most right-wing government in Israel’s history.That government’s efforts to weaken the Israeli judiciary, bolster the power of far-right religious parties and expand settlements on occupied territory badly strained relations with American Jews, about three-quarters of whom are Democrats.The Hamas attacks — and the Biden administration’s response — have so far not only united a fractured Israeli society but also buried animosities between the world’s two largest Jewish communities, in Israel and the United States.Speaking for the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Yinam Cohen, the consul general of Israel to the Midwest, praised Mr. Biden for a “moral clarity” that “lifted the spirit of Israelis amid the greatest tragedy that has occurred in the 75 years of our existence.”“History will remember President Biden as a guardian of the Jewish State,” he said.Republican presidential candidates have tried to turn the crisis into a political liability for Mr. Biden. Senator Tim Scott, Republican of South Carolina, said the president had “blood on his hands” for unfreezing $6 billion for humanitarian needs in exchange for the release from prison of five Americans now under house arrest until the money is distributed. The National Republican Congressional Committee on Thursday tried to hit vulnerable House Democrats on the same issue.Then the Biden administration and Qatar reached an agreement on Thursday to refreeze those assets.Mr. Trump, the prohibitive front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, has not helped his cause with Jews in either Israel or the United States. His dinner last November with the performer Kanye West, who had already been denounced for making antisemitic statements, and with Nick Fuentes, an outspoken antisemite and Holocaust denier, had earned the condemnation of some Trump allies. Then, Israelis on Thursday woke up to clips of the former president criticizing Mr. Netanyahu, mocking a senior Israeli military official and finger-wagging at a vaunted Israeli security apparatus that he said was unready for Hamas.By Thursday evening, the Trump campaign had rushed out a statement from the former president, saying that under his leadership, “the United States stood in complete solidarity with Israel, and as a result, Israel was safe.” But the damage may have been done.“I think what Israelis got about Trump today was the ego,” Mr. Somfalvi, the journalist, said. “It’s so childish.” More

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      in US Politics

      US reportedly persuaded Qatar to halt $6bn to Iran in breach of deal

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      A contentious deal to unfreeze $6bn of Iranian oil revenues has been plunged into uncertainty amid reports that the Biden administration has persuaded Qatar to withhold the funds in breach of a previous agreement following the devastating attack by the Palestinian group Hamas on Israel.There has been mounting pressure from both Democrats and Republicans for the White House to deny Iran access to the revenues in the face of speculation over how big a role Iran played in the weekend’s attack by Hamas, Tehran’s close ally and proxy.CBS reported that the US had reached a “quiet understanding” with Qatar – which played a mediating role in last month’s agreement that saw the release of five Americans imprisoned by Iran – to keep the funds locked in a bank account specially set up in the Gulf kingdom.“CBS News has learned that the US reached a ‘quiet understanding’ with Qatar not to release any of the $6bn in Iranian oil money that was transferred as part of a US-Iranian prisoner swap,” the network’s chief White House correspondent, Nancy Cordes wrote on X, the social media platform previously known as Twitter.Iran’s mission to the United Nations in New York city criticized any move to hold up the revenues, saying in a statement: “The US cannot renege on the agreement. The money rightfully belongs to the people of Iran, earmarked for the government to facilitate the acquisition of all essential and sanctioned requisites for Iranians.”The US deputy treasury secretary, Wally Adeyemo, had earlier told a behind-closed-door session of congressional Democrats on Capitol Hill about a “quiet agreement” to retain the cash, saying that it “isn’t going anywhere anytime soon”.The administration’s signals appeared designed to dampen controversy surrounding the funds – frozen as a result of sanctions imposed by the Trump administration in 2019 – after five Democratic senators demanded they be re-frozen in the wake of the Hamas assault, which has so far left 1,300 dead in Israel.The $6bn has also become a line of attack for Republicans, particularly Donald Trump, the former president and the party’s frontrunner for next year’s presidential nomination, who has mischaracterised the money as “US taxpayer dollars” which he said was used to finance Saturday’s attack.The White House national security council spokesman, John Kirby, declined to confirm any change in its status but repeatedly stressed that it had been untouched since the release of the five imprisoned Americans on September 18. “It’s still sitting in the Qatari bank account, all of it, every dime of it. None of it has been accessed by anybody,” he told a White House press briefing on Thursday, side-stepping questions about any new agreement to withhold it.“The [Iranian] regime was never going to see a dime of that money. This account was set up by the previous administration for this exact purpose. We have done nothing different. All that we have done is just moved the money from South Korea – where it was inaccessible – to Qatar, where it’s more accessible.”Under the terms of the agreement, he added, the money would not be accessible to Iranian regime officials but to “approved vendors” who would be allowed to use it for humanitarian and medical purposes. “We have always had the ability to provide oversight over the dispersal of these funds,” Kirby said.At the core of the controversy is speculation over what hand Iran’s theocratic rulers might have played in planning the attack by Hamas, an Islamist group which Tehran has financed over many years.Amid suggestions that the assault’s unprecedented magnitude and sophistication would surely have needed an Iranian hand, US intelligence agencies have said they have discovered no evidence of this. Instead, officials have cited early indicators that Iran had no advance knowledge of the attack and was taken by surprise, a view greeted by widespread scepticism among Republicans.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionCritics of the exchange deal contend that regardless of whether the $6bn – originally earned from oil sales to South Korea – is actually touched, the money is “fungible”, meaning Iran could still exploit it by re-allocating funds originally earmarked for other purposes.Trita Parsi, of the Washington-based Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, said re-freezing the funds would signal acceptance of this argument and warned that it could kill any future US-Iran diplomacy. “This would be the second time in five years that the US has reneged on an agreement with Iran,” said Parsi. “But the last time was the Trump administration pulling out of the JCPA nuclear accords agreed with Barack Obama. This is very different – it’s Biden’s own deal that he made four weeks ago.“Even if we accept that the JCPA is dead, it doesn’t mean that some kind of agreement down the road cannot be pursued. However, reversing after four weeks on this issue makes it very difficult to have any diplomacy going forward, because the image in Iran is that the US is a serial betrayer of any agreement it signs.”Seasoned Iran watchers have reacted doubtfully to speculation that the country’s rulers played a decisive role in Hamas’s attack.“There’s definitely a convergence of interests between Hamas and Iran,” said Vali Nasr, a Middle East specialist at Johns Hopkins school of advanced international studies. “But that doesn’t mean that Iran directed this and Hamas said, OK we are going to do it. The truth is that Hamas would be in charge.“Where Iran comes in – and I don’t know how much planning they would be involved in – is that what we saw in this attack was an upgrade to the capabilities and sophistication of Hamas as a fighting force.” More

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      Tensions Rise on Israel-Lebanon Border, and More

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      The New York Times Audio app is home to journalism and storytelling, and provides news, depth and serendipity. If you haven’t already, download it here — available to Times news subscribers on iOS — and sign up for our weekly newsletter.The Headlines brings you the biggest stories of the day from the Times journalists who are covering them, all in about 10 minutes. Hosted by Annie Correal, the new morning show features three top stories from reporters across the newsroom and around the world, so you always have a sense of what’s happening, even if you only have a few minutes to spare.Flares fired from Israel, seen from southern Lebanon, on Wednesday. There have been continuing skirmishes and artillery fire on the Israel-Lebanon border.Thaier Al-Sudani/ReutersOn Today’s Episode:Why Tensions Are Rising on Israel’s Border With Lebanon as It Fights Hamas in Gaza, with Ben HubbardRepublicans Choose a New Speaker Nominee, Then Quickly Undercut Him“The Wrath of God”: Afghans Mourn Unimaginable Loss From Quake, with Christina GoldbaumEli Cohen More

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      Trump Criticizes Netanyahu and Israeli Intelligence in Florida Speech

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      The attacks were a major focus of Mr. Trump’s remarks to a crowd of superfans in his home state, which has a significant number of Jewish voters.Former President Donald J. Trump, who frequently paints himself as the fiercest defender of Israel to ever occupy the White House, on Wednesday criticized Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a speech in Florida just days after deadly Hamas attacks rocked the country.Speaking to a crowd of supporters in West Palm Beach, a few miles from his residence at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump related a story he said he had never told about Israel’s role in the killing of Iran’s top security and intelligence commander, Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, by an American drone strike in 2020.Mr. Trump said that Israel had been working with the United States on a plan for the attack, but that he had received a call shortly beforehand to let him know that Israel would not take part. The United States proceeded anyway.“But I’ll never forget,” Mr. Trump said. “I’ll never forget that Bibi Netanyahu let us down. That was a very terrible thing.”He then criticized Israeli intelligence, pointing in part to failures to anticipate and stop Hamas, the Islamic militant group, from executing such a large-scale and devastating attack. “They’ve got to straighten it out,” Mr. Trump said.At the same time, Mr. Trump, who frequently paints himself as a staunch ally of Israel, vowed that he would “fully support” the country in its war against Hamas.The attacks were a major focus of Mr. Trump’s remarks in Florida, which is home to a significant number of Jewish voters. As he has recently, Mr. Trump attacked President Biden, blaming him for the assault and repeating a falsehood about U.S. funds to Iran, a longtime backer of Hamas. He also repeated his suggestion that the bloodshed would not have happened if he were president.But, in a new flourish, Mr. Trump then tied the current conflict to his conspiracy theories and lies about the 2020 election.“If the election wasn’t rigged,” he said, “there would be nobody even thinking about going into Israel.”Mr. Trump also appeared to blame the Biden administration for clashes on Israel’s northern border, which the former president attributed to Hezbollah, the powerful Iran-backed militant organization in Lebanon committed to the destruction of the Jewish state. He then repeatedly called Hezbollah “very smart.”Mr. Trump’s appearance in West Palm Beach marked a bit of a homecoming. He has held a flurry of campaign events in Iowa and New Hampshire, and last week, he traveled to New York to attend a civil fraud trial he faces there.In Florida, he spoke at a convention center for a meeting hosted by Club 47 USA, which describes itself as the largest pro-Trump club in America and a “corporation formed to support” the former president’s agenda.The friendly crowd, Mr. Trump said, accounted for his decision to recount the story about the strike against Mr. Suleimani. “Nobody’s heard this story before,” he said. “But I’d like to tell it to Club 47, because you’ve been so loyal.”Mr. Netanyahu commended Mr. Trump at the time. But some in Israel were more muted, wary that Iran might retaliate against Israel for the American attack.Mr. Trump has been critical of Mr. Netanyahu before, telling the Axios reporter Barak Ravid that he was particularly incensed after the prime minister congratulated Mr. Biden for his 2020 election victory.Mr. Trump also criticized Mr. Netanyahu in a Fox News Radio interview that is expected to air on Thursday. In a clip from that interview that aired on television on Wednesday, Mr. Trump said that Mr. Netanyahu “was not prepared and Israel was not prepared.”He again suggested Israeli intelligence had been deficient, saying, “Thousands of people knew about it and they let this slip by. ”Mr. Trump’s remarks in Florida drew near-immediate criticism from the state’s governor, Ron DeSantis, his closest rival in the primary.“Terrorists have murdered at least 1,200 Israelis and 22 Americans and are holding more hostage, so it is absurd that anyone, much less someone running for President, would choose now to attack our friend and ally, Israel, much less praise Hezbollah terrorists as ‘very smart.’” Mr. DeSantis said on X, formerly known as Twitter.Mr. Trump used his appearance on Wednesday to knock Mr. DeSantis, whom he leads by double-digits in most polls, in his own backyard.“He didn’t have a lot of political skill, to put it mildly,” Mr. Trump said, adding that Mr. DeSantis was “falling like a very badly injured bird from the sky.”The event in West Palm Beach began with a panel of right-wing media figures and influencers discussing their experiences with the former president.Representative Matt Gaetz, one of Mr. Trump’s closest allies in Washington, was slated to speak but instead appeared only briefly at the start of Mr. Trump’s remarks.Mr. Trump praised Mr. Gaetz, but he did not mention his role in the paralysis currently seizing Capitol Hill.Mr. Gaetz last week successfully pushed to remove Representative Kevin McCarthy of California as the House’s speaker. The body has been without a leader ever since, which has left it unable to fully conduct regular business. More

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      How the Left Is Reacting to the Hamas Atrocities

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      More from our inbox:Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Candidacy: Demeaning the Family’s LegacyGender InequalityTrump’s Harangues Getty ImagesTo the Editor:Re “The Anti-Israel Left Needs to Take a Hard Look at Itself,” by Bret Stephens (column, Oct. 11):Hamas’s systematic and indiscriminate rape, torture, murder and kidnapping of children, grandmothers, ravers and peace activists are brutal enough. What compounds the despair, however, has been the response in the immediate aftermath by some of my fellow liberals.These are the people who reflexively see “microaggressions” everywhere, yet are blind to this macroaggression. The people who insist that “words are violence,” yet celebrated actual violence against innocents as a form of “resistance.” The people who are quick to accuse so many institutions of systemic racism, yet glorify an institution (Hamas) that has been publicly and unapologetically antisemitic for decades.It is possible, as I do, to support and sympathize with ordinary Palestinians, and strive for a future of peaceful coexistence, while also recognizing the unequivocal depravity of these terrorist attacks. This was not a difficult moral test. Yet liberals failed miserably.Mark BessoudoLondonTo the Editor:Bret Stephens is right to call out supporters of Palestinian rights who minimize or even celebrate the atrocities committed by Hamas, and to point to the explicit or implicit antisemitism of some anti-Zionist arguments.However, his claim that to call for a cease-fire is pro-Hamas is wrong. It is rather to call for the taking of innocent life on both sides to cease. Israeli officials made it clear that they would exercise no restraint in their bombardment of Gaza, and Israeli actions have followed through on these words.Let’s leave aside questions of “moral equivalence” between actors, and focus on actions. Deliberately killing civilians and deliberately failing to avoid killing civilians are both war crimes under international law.Stopping criminal killing on all sides and releasing hostages are not only vital for upholding the increasingly fragile and widely disregarded framework of international law, but also an essential step toward attempting to bring a just peace to the Middle East.Chris SinhaNorwich, EnglandThe writer is an honorary professor in the School of Politics, Philosophy, Language and Communication, University of East Anglia.To the Editor:Thanks to Thomas L. Friedman (“Israel Has Never Needed to Be Smarter Than Now,” column, Oct. 11) and Bret Stephens for their brilliant analyses of the situation in the Middle East. I am a secular American Jew, a proud liberal who is appalled at the authoritarian tendencies of the Netanyahu regime.There is no doubt in my mind that decades of harsh treatment of Palestinians by Israel has led to tremendous frustrations, and that Benjamin Netanyahu has exacerbated the problem, but nothing justifies the terrorist actions taken by Hamas.Israelis must boot Mr. Netanyahu and his ilk, and elect leaders who will offer Palestinians respect and some measure of hope. The Middle East powers such as Saudi Arabia and Jordan must dislodge Hamas, and blunt the influence of Iran in the area.New leadership is the only way to achieve a lasting peace. I am not holding my breath.Bill GottdenkerMountainside, N.J.To the Editor:In the last few days we have witnessed with horror and disbelief that Israeli civilians, including children, have been killed and captured by Hamas. This is the true definition of terrorists — those who try to intimidate civilians to pursue a political goal.The stated political goal of Hamas is the eradication of the state of Israel. This is what makes peace so elusive in this region. The right of Israel to exist is reality. When we see Hamas taking up arms and the cheering for the barbarous acts committed on an innocent civilian population in Israel, we too should raise our voices in unison. We should declare that this type of terror has no place in a civilized world.Deborah GitomerTampa, Fla.To the Editor:The horrors visited upon Israeli civilians ought not to be replicated in Gaza. The international community, including the United Nations and nongovernmental organizations, ought to press and support Egypt in immediately setting up refugee centers and opening the border to rescue innocent civilians in Gaza and give them shelter, food and water.Isebill V. GruhnSanta Cruz, Calif.The writer is emerita professor of politics at the University of California, Santa Cruz.Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Candidacy: Demeaning the Family’s LegacyRobert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime vaccine skeptic, has built a base of support made up of disaffected voters across the political spectrum.Matt Rourke/Associated PressTo the Editor:Re “Kennedy Announces He Will Run for President as an Independent” (news article, Oct. 10):Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s candidacy as an independent is an unwelcome development. It serves no purpose other than increasing the chances of a Donald Trump victory by dividing the anti-Trump votes. It is no accident that most of his financial support comes from groups aligned with the G.O.P.It is telling that no fewer than four of his siblings — Rory, Kerry, Kathleen and Joseph — have publicly condemned Mr. Kennedy’s candidacy. I hope that anyone considering supporting him listens to the warnings of his siblings.He may share the surname of a political dynasty, but Mr. Kennedy demeans the legacy of his father and uncles, and does the nation a disservice with his candidacy.Harvey M. BermanWhite Plains, N.Y.Gender InequalityElsa/Getty ImagesClaudia Goldin’s wide-ranging work has delved into the causes of the gender wage gap and the evolution of women’s participation in the labor market.Harvard University/EPA, via ShutterstockTo the Editor:Re “Travis, Don’t Fumble Taylor,” by Maureen Dowd (column, Oct. 8), and “Trailblazer in Economics Is Awarded Nobel Prize” (Business, Oct. 10):Ms. Dowd’s concern about successful men who feel intimidated by powerful women offers a striking and poignant example of one attitude that perpetuates the gender inequality and couple inequity that Claudia Goldin, the Nobel prize recipient, has analyzed in the workplace and the home.The roots of this inequality are so deeply embedded and so historically interwoven in personal behaviors and relationships as well as social and economic structures that lasting change will not result unless there is a simultaneous assault on all these fronts.Patricia AusposQueensThe writer is the author of “Breaking Conventions: Five Couples in Search of Marriage-Career Balance at the Turn of the 19th Century.”Trump’s HaranguesSupporters of former President Donald J. Trump gathered near Trump Tower the night before the first day of the fraud trial against him and his company.Dave Sanders for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Trump Sharpens His Remarks as His Legal Woes Escalate” (news article, Oct. 4):I was a career public defender in coastal Mississippi, representing thousands of indigent people charged with felonies. Not one of them ever stood outside a courtroom and harangued or denigrated his or her judge, and I have no doubt about what would have occurred if they had. Off to jail for contempt they’d go.The media deserves some blame for the problem, for giving Donald Trump the forum he so desires, no matter his blather. Maybe it should back off a bit.Ross Parker SimonsPascagoula, Miss. More

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      in Elections

      Israel Violence Underscores the GOP Divide on Foreign Policy

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      The fighting in Israel has become another flashpoint in the Republican presidential primary, further revealing the foreign policy divide among candidates scrambling to distinguish themselves in a race dominated by former President Donald J. Trump.“I will always condemn antisemitism, appeasement and weakness on the radical left, but I will also call out weakness or confusion among conservatives as well,” Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina said during a speech about Israel on Tuesday at the Hudson Institute in Washington.In a departure from his usually noncombative campaign style, Mr. Scott criticized both Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida and the entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who along with Mr. Trump have outlined anti-interventionist foreign policy positions. Mr. Scott highlighted Mr. Ramaswamy’s comments on Israel earlier this year (he has shifted his stance on cutting U.S. military aid to Israel), and Mr. DeSantis’s characterization of the war in Ukraine as a “territorial dispute,” which Mr. DeSantis later walked back.Former Vice President Mike Pence also attacked several candidates in remarks on Saturday in which he criticized Republicans who “embraced the language of isolationism and appeasement.” He named Mr. Trump, Mr. Ramaswamy and Mr. DeSantis as voices that have “run contrary to the tradition in our party that America is the leader of the free world.”Those three men, who have espoused anti-interventionist stances on issues like Ukraine, strongly condemned the attack on Israel. Mr. Trump has said he would “stand strongly” with Israel, claiming that the attacks “would never have happened” if he were president. Mr. DeSantis called on Israel to respond with “overwhelming force” and said the United States would stand fully behind Israel. Mr. Ramaswamy said that the U.S. should “stand ready to provide additional military supplies.” Mr. Ramaswamy hit back at Mr. Pence in a social media post Tuesday night and again criticized Nikki Haley, the former United Nations ambassador, who said over the weekend that the attacks in Israel amounted to “an attack on America because they hate us just as much.”Mr. Ramaswamy called comments from both of them “histrionics” that “are unhelpful and unserious.”Anti-interventionist positions got some support this week from the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who mocked Ms. Haley for suggesting that the attack on Israel was also an attack on America and said: “Wars beget more war. The bigger the conflict, the uglier and longer-lasting the consequences. These are not complex observations but seem lost on our leadership class.”While the Republican Party has shifted away from hawkish foreign policies over the past decade, a move that accelerated with Mr. Trump’s rise, Mr. Pence and Ms. Haley have outlined more traditional stances. But aside from Ms. Haley, who has risen in the polls and attracted increased donor attention, the other candidates expressing more hawkish views are polling in the low single digits.Maggie Astor More

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      Hamas attack on Israel might be setback for Palestinian cause in US just as progress was in view

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      If Hamas intended to remind the world that the Palestinians are still there after years of marginalisation and international indifference to occupation and deepening oppression, then its bloody assault on Israel certainly achieved that.At the same time, the attack that Joe Biden called “pure unadulterated evil” might represent a huge setback for the Palestinian cause in the US just as the political debate and public opinion was gradually shifting away from decades of often lockstep support for Israel in Washington.Pictures of slaughtered children among the 1,000 dead, and traumatised Israeli survivors filling US television screens begging for the return of abducted relatives, prompted an outpouring of revulsion across the US political spectrum and among ordinary Americans.Yet, Palestinian and more dovish pro-Israel groups who have worked for years to push a more open debate about the Israel-Palestinian conflict said there were signs of it paying off in the reaction to the Hamas attack.Hadar Susskind, president of Americans for Peace Now, sister organisation of the Israeli peace movement, said that where once there would have been only unequivocal denunciations, some politicians and others wanted to give a more nuanced take that took account of the Palestinian reality.“Right now, it’s very difficult. Over the last years we are having better, more reasonable conversations in our political sphere. Not perfect by any means but we’ve been moving in the right direction. This is a very, very difficult moment. Everybody who’s talking about it needs to deal with this. But I think we are dealing with it from a different baseline,” he said.“I spoke to a number of members of Congress and congressional staff and others this week who were trying to figure out how to say things that are hopefully helpful and positive but also true and not simply trying to score points for your side.”Several politicians strongly denounced the “horrific acts” by Hamas but said the attack did not happen in a vacuum and that the way to end such violence was to “end Israeli military occupation and apartheid”.Before the Hamas attack, Americans for Peace now and likeminded groups had been hoping to build on shifts in US public opinion seen in a Gallup poll earlier this year that found for the first time more Democrats were sympathetic to the Palestinians than the Israelis by a margin of 11%, a significant shift from a decade ago.Two years ago, a Jewish Electorate Institute poll found that 58% of American Jewish voters support restrictions on US military aid to prevent Israel using it to expand West Bank settlements. One-third agreed that “Israel’s treatment of Palestinians is similar to racism in the United States” and one-quarter said that “Israel is an apartheid state”, numbers that shocked some Jewish community leaders.Once unswerving US political support for Israeli governments has also eroded as they move ever further to the right. In August Chris Van Hollen, a Democratic senator, called on Biden to “get more personally engaged” in stopping “racists” in the Israeli government from a land grab in the occupied territories and committing “gross violations” of Palestinian rights or risk damage to the US’s credibility.Yousef Munayyer, former executive director of the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, said it is too early to predict the lasting impact but that the attack has forced the Palestinian issue back onto the agenda.“Moments of this scale tend to have longer developing impacts on everybody. I would emphasise that it’s hard to walk away from this moment over time and continue to ignore this issue. People around the world, including here in the United States, have dropped the issue of Palestine and peace. The urgency of addressing this issue and resolving it should be clear to everyone,” he said.For years, Israel has worked to marginalise the Palestinians abroad as well as at home, and to curb even non-violent means of protest and action, including pushing laws in the US to punish boycotts as antisemitic.The Biden administration paid lip-service to a two state solution that appeared to amount to little more than cover for inaction and an unwillingness to confront the reality of the Israeli prime minster Benjamin Netanyahu’s repeated statements that he would never permit a Palestinian state.Susskind said that the recent attack forces the Palestinians back onto the agenda “in a bloody, murderous, horrific way”.“The world is paying attention to the Palestinians, and specifically to Hamas, which is not accidental. That’s a fact. There are many moments in history and people in different countries forcing attention by committing horrible acts,” he said.“Obviously the Biden administration is being forced to pay attention right now. Nobody in this moment is talking about what I would call the positive agenda, how to make things better, a peace process kind of agenda. When this immediate fighting comes to an end, we’ll see what happens. I think there is going to be an Israeli reckoning for Netanyahu and his government, and then we’ll see what comes out of that.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe direction of that debate in the US is also likely to be influenced by Israel’s military response over the coming days and weeks. While the focus for now is on the Israeli casualties, the rising toll among Palestinian civilians in Gaza who cannot flee the enclave is likely to demand growing attention.Munayyer is concerned that Israeli rhetoric is being turned into action.“Now we are likely to see mass atrocities being committed as the Israeli military is out for vengeance in the words of the Israeli prime minister. So a lot of people’s reactions to understanding all of this are going to be impacted by what is still to come in the days ahead of us,” he said.Large-scale Israeli military assaults on Gaza in 2008 and 2014 were instrumental in shifting public opinion in the US, especially on university campuses.The response to the Hamas attack has also divided the US Jewish community which is largely united in its condemnation, but has differences over whether to acknowledge the occupation and Israeli government actions as a cause of continuing conflict.Susskind said Americans for Peace Now declined to sign a statement by the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations denouncing the assault by “Iran-backed Hamas terrorists”.“We didn’t sign it because although I agree with most of what it said, it also called the Hamas attacks unprovoked and that’s not true. The Hamas attacks were horrific. They are war crimes. They are inexcusable. I condemn them, unequivocally 100 times over. But unprovoked is not true,” he said.“This attack does demand a military response. I am not a pacifist. But there is a difference between the military response and some of the language that you’ve seen from Israeli political leaders and others who are calling for war crimes in return. The response to that, is not to go in and indiscriminately kill Palestinian people. That’s not an acceptable answer. War crimes are never okay, by anyone.”The “pro-Israel, pro-peace” group J-Street was strident in its denunciation of Hamas and support for military action to defeat it.But Debra Shushan, J-Street’s policy director, said the attack obliges US politicians to recognise that things cannot go on as before. She said it is right, for now, for Washington to focus on Israel’s “legitimate right of self-defence in accordance with international law” and securing the release of Israelis abducted to Gaza.“In the longer term, there are many questions that must be asked about flawed policies and narratives. I expect fertile ground for a recognition that a return to the status quo ante of “managing the conflict” is unacceptable. The vision for a peaceful resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a negotiated end to the occupation of Palestinian Territory, and a future of genuine security, self-determination and equality for Israelis and Palestinians must prevail.” More