A year ago, in a similar summary with an eye to 2023, this newspaper wrote that "the most important ongoing event in the United States is the rise of a black wave of antisemitic attacks." The black wave corresponded with the Republican "red wave" predicted in the wake of the 2022 election, but turned into a puddle. The anti-Semitic wave, on the other hand, turned into a tsunami following the massacre by Hamas on 7 October this year.
In the world's largest Jewish city, New York, a Jew walking down a street with religious identification marks takes a big risk, and most avoid it. It can be predicted that the continuation of the war against the State of Israel in various arenas by Iran and its terrorist organizations will reinforce the anti-Semitic trend, which has become a prominent presence in mainstream American public life.
Demonstrators march against anti-Semitism in London, Photo: AP
The hopes for the coming year are for victory. A victory for Israel. Suddenly, anyone who wants to understand the future must go back to the past. Anti-Semitism in the West, and especially in the United States, originated in the anti-Zionist industry of the Soviet Union since the establishment of the State of Israel, and especially since the Six-Day War. Doctors' organizations accusing Israel of genocide are a postmodern incarnation, in the West, of the same doctors and scientists who mobilized on Stalin's behalf and believed the accusation against the Jewish doctors of a plot to poison the Soviet leadership.
We are truly returning to the dark days when doctors, scientists and intellectuals mobilize for evil. The fact that this is happening on the strategic home front of freedom seekers around the world, in the United States, does not bode well.
The Committee's Question the Day After
It turns out, then, that in addition to the armies of terror, Israel is also being attacked by an army of academics, intellectuals and politicians who are poisoning the younger generation. At this year's Oscars, two very prominent films with Jewish superheroes will compete – "Oppenheimer" and "The Maestro" (Leonard Bernstein). "Golda" will most likely remain on the bench. She is too Jewish and belligerent, while Oppenheimer and Bernstein have undergone a laboratory process of de-Jewishization.
Harvard President Claudine Gay, Photo: Getty Images
Event in support of the Palestinians, in New York, photo: AFP
Sometime in the coming year, the government will appoint a body to investigate October 7, in order to put the events and facts in order. It is likely that the investigative body will deal with three issues: the lack of any warning and the intelligence failure; the operational failure and lack of operational preparedness when the attack comes; and the policy towards Gaza and Hamas in recent years. Regarding the latter issue, however, it is difficult to give credit to non-politically elected people to deal with a controversial question that has always been subject to public debate. The issue of the timing of the committee will occupy the Israeli public.
If there is no stable and satisfactory ceasefire in the north, the war in Lebanon is expected to expand into all-out war. The question that will occupy the public debate is under what conditions the residents can return to their communities. Questions that in the past were not the subject of political controversy, such as the communities and residents of the northern and western Negev, will become fuel for the Israeli political street, as it has been shaped since the establishment of the right-wing government a year ago.
Defense Minister Galant in a dialogue with reservists in Metula: "If Hezbollah wants to go up one level, we will go up five" // Photo: Shahar Yurman
Land houses in Metula. When will residents return?, Photo: Reuters
Longing for "They Can"
Politics and all its public and media derivatives will be the accompanying chords of the military melody that cannot be stopped. Will Gantz and Eisenkot leave the government and dismantle the emergency unity? These are three competitors for the defense minister's slot. One picture saves 1,000 words of interpretation: Yoav Galant leaves a meeting of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee accompanied by Yuli Edelstein. The committee headed by Edelstein has become Galant's home turf, where he poses his challenge to the political arena, the public and the prime minister.
Alongside politics and security – but always with a connection to them – two main events that delineate the agenda are the Olympics, which will open in Paris at the end of July, when Israel launches a soccer team for the first time in 48 years, and three months later, the US elections.
As far as President Biden is concerned, it is already too late for him and his Democratic Party to drop out of the race. Many Democratic voters expected him to step down. His situation is dire, and the two wars largely caused by Biden's fault, in Ukraine and Gaza, are undermining public support for him. Opposite Biden, the same former president from the previous round, Donald Trump. His chances of winning are great this time.
Trump and Biden. An election that will affect far beyond the United States, Photo: AP
In the background of all this, we must remember that the current axis of evil is in full swing. Contrary to last year's predictions that Putin would get into trouble in Ukraine, now it seems that he is succeeding in creating a lot of instability in the world and the United States has no answer, such as the strengthening of the alliance between Russia and Iran and China.
In Israel, there will be a parallel struggle over whether to hold early elections. In the two Lebanon wars, the results of the war brought forward elections by a year.
We all pray for a year of the release of the captives held by Hamas and for victory. And maybe the rage song "Harbo Darbo" will be replaced by a new edition of "Han Afshar," with a strong and good story that will put love in it.
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