Antisemitism still surging, don’t forget Taiwan and other commentary

Conservative: Antisemitism Still Surging

The post-Oct. 7, 2023, flare-up in antisemitism “seemed primed” to fade as Hamas’ attacks fell “further in the rearview mirror,” but the hate-spike is “acting funny,” warns Commentary’s Seth Mandel. A definitive Tel Aviv University report finds more Jews were killed worldwide in 2025 than in any year in more than three decades; three years after Oct. 7, “violent anti-Semitism is still rising across parts of the West”; to “be Jewish in some parts of the world now is to feel more like a target than ever.” Time to “stop pretending” that “constant vilification” of Israel has no “dangerous consequences” for Jews. Who knows “if the surge will taper off any time soon”? Antisemitism “continues to defy predictions in the worst way possible.”

Defense beat: Don’t Forget Taiwan

“The conflict in Iran should be a reminder of, not a cause to divert attention from, U. S. interests in the West Pacific,” argues Seth Cropsey at The Hill. “America’s war in the Middle East demonstrates the necessity of allies to American strategy.” Notice: “The U. S. imported more goods last year from Taiwan than from China, while the U. S. for the first time in a quarter-century became Taiwan’s largest export partner,” even as Taiwan fosters “massive growth of the semiconductor ecosystem in the U. S.” Sustaining the US-Taiwan “partnership requires accelerating military transfers and improving defense-industrial and operational links.” The prez must “resist the temptation” to “diminish this essential partnership” in his May meeting with China’s Xi. “Taiwan is a linchpin in America’s Indo-Pacific security and the region’s freedom.”

From the right: Va Gerrymander Blatantly Illegal

Virginia was long “considered the gold standard among states rejecting gerrymandering,” but its new Democratic leaders have rammed through the “most radical gerrymandered map in the nation,” notes Jonathan Turley at Fox News. The state’s top court must address the “shockingly dishonest and misleading” campaign to pass the resolution that allowed this, including the “deceit” baked into the resolution’s “obtuse and vague” and the “abridged and unprecedented” process to get it on the ballot. The state attorney general offers only “babbling spin” in defense of all this, betting that the court will “shrug away the problems” rather than make “Democrats face the ultimate disaster.” But the “unlawful means” used to impose this gerrymander “destroy the credibility” of the Democrats’ claim to “being defenders of the Constitution.”

White House watch: Unexpected Hero’s Journey

“The expectation” before the White House Correspondents dinner “was that President Trump would turn the tables” after Barack Obama “humiliated him” at the 2011 dinner, recalls The Wall Street Journal’s Matthew Hennessey. Trump’s “scheduled stemwinder was billed as payback”; now it’s “unlikely” to be given. It’s all part of the “hero’s journey”: Trump grew a small fortune “into a big one,” lost it, then “built it all back.” He was “charming on TV,” but when “he dipped his toe into politics, the pointy-heads” laughed. Yet after that 2011 dinner, he resolved “to show them” — and did. So the elites “hounded him,” impeached him twice; assassins tried to kill him. “Yet the people lifted him up.” “No one knows where the journey ends” — but “it’s a hell of a story.”

Politics: Face Facts on Left’s Violence

The “familiar chorus of voices” calling for “lowering the temperature” of divisive political rhetoric “pretend” that both sides are at fault, notes The Federalist’s John Daniel Davidson, but in fact “only one side in America today” has a “problem with political violence,” and everyone knows it’s the left, which “foments violence” by promulgating “false propaganda” and by “funding the supposed right-wing extremists they warn about.” Conservatives are “in a life-or-death contest with bloodthirsty radicals” who would like to “orphan our children.” If this means “dismantling institutions controlled by the left, then we must dismantle them” because “they are resorting to unjust force, and only just force will stop them.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board