As Arab and Muslim leaders talk themselves blue in the face at a summit of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in Istanbul, making grandiose statements and threats against Israel, there are those in Gaza who are less content with words, and are actively working to bring about another war between Hamas and Israel. Hamas supposedly does not want such a war, but the firing of over a dozen rockets at Israel in less than a week can mean only one thing: Hamas has given its blessing to these attacks for its own reasons. And, it needs to be said, from Hamas’s point of view, there are reasons.

This past week marks exactly 30 years since the First Intifada, and 17 since the second. This past Friday, the air was full of rage like it was then. All of this raises memories that I worked hard to suppress, images that I never want to see again. I can only hope, with all my heart, that that there won’t be a third, though I know this hope feels selfish.

While it’s too early to make any definite assessments, it seems this latest wave, now four days old, isn’t the much-anticipated third intifada, either. Friday was the peak of demonstrations, with approximately 3,000 Palestinians protesting and rioting at some 20 flash points across the West Bank. By Saturday, their number was reduced to about 500 and Sunday was even lower. While this round of violence is not yet over – and a security guard was stabbed in central Jerusalem in a terror attack on Sunday afternoon – if nothing untoward happens, it will probably peter out again in a few days.

“Donald Trump’s base is not only made up of evangelicals, but of anti-immigration nationalists as well. While evangelicals saw Trump as their white knight promising to return Christian values to the mainstream, anti-immigrant nationalists saw him as a similar harbinger of American whiteness. “Judeo-Christian values” is the term the Trump camp — and the GOP writ large — has repeatedly utilized to unite these two camps and turn out both of their votes. Contemporary American Jewish values — values which are largely liberal — are simply not reflected in the right’s usage of the term. The term is not one of Jewish inclusion and Jewish values, but of cynical Republican politics.”

The sheer bluntness of far-right anti-Semitism makes it easier to identify and stigmatize as beyond the pale; individuals like David Duke and the hosts of the “Daily Shoah” podcast make no pretense of residing within the mainstream of American political debate. But the humanist appeals of the far left, whose every libel against the Jewish state is paired with a righteous invocation of “justice” for the Palestinian people, invariably trigger repetitive and esoteric debates over whether this or that article, allusion, allegory, statement, policy, or political initiative is anti-Semitic or just critical of Israel.

The most pronounced turning point in GOP voters’ support for Israel came after 9/11, as increased U.S. military involvement in the Middle East resulted in more pro-Israel policies percolating into the Republican agenda. Israel was struggling with its own upswing in terrorist attacks, so many influential conservatives saw new relevance in Samuel Huntington’s model for a clash of civilizations in which Israel and the United States were aligned as members of “the West,” in opposition to other cultures — in this case, Islam.

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