Come on. Be honest. Surely someone reading this is hoarding a keepsake from the Eisenhower administration, stashed away in the attic. Better check, because you might be in violation of the Espionage Act. It seems that anyone who's anyone, and even a few nobodies, is in possession of state secrets with classified markings and fuzzy provenance.

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Secure facilities are so yesterday. Nowadays, top-secret documents apparently have feet and simply slip away to improbable locations.

That's the only conclusion one can reach now that we know both presidents Trump and Biden were in unlawful possession of such confidential material. So, too, was Vice President Mike Pence. The documents in Biden's think tank offices and homes date back to when he was vice-president and senator.

Take a guess at what Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter have been up to these past several weeks – on their knees desperately searching under mattresses, climbing ladders to scan the tops of bookcases and generally casing the joint. No former statesman wishes to be included in this evolving list of presidential purloiners of documents that belong to the National Archives.

Yes, it is true that Biden has been cooperating fully with federal authorities, while Trump, predictably, has been evasive and obstructionist. Yet that doesn't explain why Biden's personal attorney, without national security clearances, was permitted to rummage around for documents all by himself, with no FBI oversight. Moreover, given these recent disclosures and the FBI's Normandy Landing appearance at Mar-a-Lago, was it absolutely necessary to conduct a nighttime raid on Trump's home as if he was the head of some South Florida drug cartel?

Ironically, pursuant to the Presidential Records Act, Trump, as a former president, at least had a colorable claim to having a possessory interest in documents created during his presidency. No such allowance exists for former vice presidents and senators, however.

And we haven't been told why these classified documents are so secret in the first place, or whether they should be designated as such. President Obama himself once quipped: "There's classified, and there's classified." His point being: Some stuff is meant only for the eyes of those in the Situation Room. Other documents marked classified can actually be shared by people eating at the White House cafeteria.

We have no way of knowing whether these documents include nuclear codes, or recipes for apple pie à la mode. The House Intelligence Committee will be conducting hearings this week and perhaps we'll find out.

Meanwhile, the Department of Justice, in conducting its investigation of Trump, made clear that removal, possession and the mishandling of these documents – whether classified or not – all by itself, triggers the Espionage Act. That was disappointing news. Apparently, Trump wasn't involved in some classic Cold War caper with sinister spies flashing "Man from U.N.C.L.E." tradecraft. We were kind of hoping that the Espionage Act indicated, well, espionage – á la Boris and Natasha. Instead, we were told that Trump didn't have to sell state secrets or destroy classified documents in order to violate the law.

So when President Biden proclaims, "there is no there there," and that the garage that warehoused both his coveted Corvette and mildewing documents was "locked," or that their misplacement was "inadvertent," pursuant to the DOJ's own prosecutorial parameters, none of these are exonerating in any way.

But perhaps most troubling: Are we only now coming to learn that classified documents went missing and no one responsible for their whereabouts knew anything about their disappearance? Take notice: Every man and woman is now on their own to safeguard their Social Security numbers. No one, apparently, is minding the store.

We're like a country that can't find its keys.

A lot of weirdly mysterious stuff is happening these days. For instance, we're fighting a competing superpower's balloons? Seriously? First it was the Wuhan Virus; now it's the Chinese Hindenburg? With all those flight simulator skills our kids have acquired from playing video games, and with "Top Gun: Maverick" breaking box office records, our dog fights have come down to this?

Before shooting it down with one of our air-to-air Sidewinder missiles, perhaps we should have first sent up our Elmo or Lilo & Stitch Thanksgiving Day balloons, as helium-filled emissaries.

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Perhaps we're suffering from a post-COVID breakdown, a laxity and carelessness provoked by having spent the first two years of the coronavirus in lockdown. We don't know how to do much anymore other than test for Omicron and binge on streaming channels. Our political, corporate and sexual imaginings and intrigues have been confined to "Game of Thrones," "Succession" and "Outlander," respectively. Without our screens, we're lost.

Which brings me to the mother of all misbegotten screens – Hunter Biden's laptop, which in some bizarre way, links all of these sordid stories. After all, the younger Biden had access to his father's disseminated documents. He had keys to the think tank at the University of Pennsylvania. He also lived and paid rent in the very homes where all these sets of documents resided, too. He even had keys to the garage and Corvette.

Meanwhile, the think tank was partially funded by Chinese donors, and millions of dollars flowed to Hunter Biden and his uncle, the president's brother, from Chinese energy firms and other businesses, raising the serious specter of influence peddling – in which Attorney General Merrick Garland, remarkably, has shown very little interest. Of a further compromising nature, Hunter apparently had ties to Chinese intelligence officials.

Is that the reason why we're not supposed to associate COVID with the Wuhan lab, and why the Chinese balloon floated across the American horizon for days before it was shot down off the coast of South Carolina?

What's contained in that laptop may answer some of these questions. At the very least, we've been assured that the sexual content on that hard drive is far more salacious than anything viewable on "Outlander."

Featured on JNS.org, this article was first published by the Jewish Journal.

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Tragically, a reporter for Al Jazeera was killed during a skirmish between Israeli troops and Palestinian terrorists in one of the most dangerous regions of the West Bank. Almost instantly, Israel was blamed for the continuing spread of COVID-19 and gasoline price-gouging.

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Responsibility for the dead broadcast journalist was a given.

In any instance in which a Palestinian life is taken, a guilty verdict against Israel is swift even though the charge may be patently false and libelous. With the damage already done and public attention directed elsewhere, the accusation sometimes gets walked back. A full retraction is a rarity.

Meanwhile, millions of Arabs have been killed in wars by their co-religionists (more than 500,000 in Syria, another 500,000 in Iraq and Iran, 15,000 in Yemen, and counting), but "bloody murder" is scarcely heard. Resolutions condemning Muslim countries for such massive death tolls do not multiply in the United Nations (hardly any are ever drafted).

The lives of Arabs are, apparently, more valuable if Israel is the reason they end. And any Israeli reprisal or preemptive strike in self-defense, regardless of the circumstance, is routinely prejudged a war crime.

Because the demise of the Al Jazeera reporter, Shireen Abu Akleh, took place in Jenin where the Palestinian Authority is responsible for security, the bullet that killed her remains in the custody of Palestinian police.

The crime scene was immediately contaminated. Israel called for a joint forensic investigation. The Palestinians refused, and won't even show investigators the fatal bullet.

For its part, Israel has already identified the IDF soldier and the weapon that may have caused her death. No surprise there – Israel has a long history of accepting responsibility for actions that violate IDF protocols.

Indeed, whenever Israeli soldiers use excessive force or violate the rules of engagement, they are prosecuted and punished in military tribunals. For instance, after a terrorist in the West Bank stabbed an Israeli soldier, he was shot in the head by an Israeli medic, despite being injured and disarmed. Such unlawful actions violate the IDF's Code of Ethics.

In a more infamous case in 2014, three settlers from the West Bank (an adult and two minors), in retaliation for the kidnapping and murder of three Jewish teenagers, kidnapped and burned to death a Palestinian teenager. Two were given life sentences, and a third will serve 21 years in prison.

This is quite different from what happens to Arabs who murder Jews. The Palestinian Authority doesn't punish but rather incentivizes the killing of Jews, with lifetime monthly stipends and assorted other benefits. The more serious the crime, the more lavish the payout and benefits.

For a press corps that congenitally demonizes Israel and finds Palestinians blameless, such disparities receive scant attention. Unflattering tales of Palestinian moral failure are not newsworthy. The journalistic mission is to spill ink only when Israel draws blood.

And exaggerating the scope of the libel itself is of primary importance. For instance, Israel is now being accused of intentionally assassinating Abu Akleh. That makes a lot of sense-Israel needs to kill a female Palestinian-American journalist like it needs a hole in its head. Isn't there already enough revulsion directed at the Jewish state?

Apparently not. If you listen to congressional "Squad" leader Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Israel deserves even more derision, along with the scrapping of America's military aid.

Just listen to this. Methinks the bartender doth protest too much. And she's defaming Israel from Queens, New York, not Bismarck, North Dakota! Jewish Democrats seem incapable of reading the tea leaves brewed in this Progressive Tea Party.

There's a long history of playing fast and loose with footage and forensics when it comes to describing events that take place in the Holy Land.

Remember the notorious video from 2000 of the clash between Israeli troops and Hamas operatives in Gaza, in which a little Palestinian boy cowered behind his father against the wall of a building? According to the film, the boy was killed and the father severely injured. Israel accepted full responsibility.

Over the next 13 years, however, other journalists came forward and began asking questions about the veracity of the video, which had been edited. Meanwhile, Israel conducted its own inquiry. The raw footage showed that the deadly fire most likely came from Palestinians – and weren't very deadly. The boy was not actually killed, and the father's injuries apparently occurred at another location, and at the hands of Hamas! What the world saw was staged for the deliberate purpose of slandering Israel.

Don't be surprised if a similar finding one day emerges from the death of this Al Jazeera reporter.

And let's not forget the Goldstone Report, a UN fact-finding mission following the 2008-09 war between Israel and Hamas. The inquiry concluded that Israel targeted Palestinian civilians. In 2011, however, the judge who chaired the investigation disavowed his own findings and wanted the report retracted – to no avail. Even more self-condemning, he acknowledged that it was actually Hamas that targeted Israeli civilians.

Outlandish claims persist that Israel violates civilized norms. To prove the point, the ancient blood libel has returned, but not without refinements. Instead of Jews making Passover matzah with children's blood, today, Israel is harvesting Palestinians' organs. Yes, despite all evidence to the contrary, the Jewish state is interested not in racking up Nobel Prizes for its medical breakthroughs, but rather in furthering the diabolical work of Dr. Josef Mengele. These charges emanate not from the ignorant Arab street, but from more eminent authorities: the Palestinian representative to the United Nations and professors from American universities.

Armed with ignorance and fortified by toxic antisemitism, Israel's enemies spout AOC-style inanities that get retweeted into talking points and recited on college campuses where students disseminate doctored memes rather than read books.

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Among the tragic consequences in this age of endangered free speech and an agenda-driven press is that our founding fathers envisioned these rights as a way to ensure a well-informed public. What we are left with are sketchy truths and history served up as trivialized kitsch. That's all well and good for Israel's detractors, who depend on skewed impressions of the Middle East.

And that's precisely the array of distortions we're receiving.

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The anticipated civility of the enlightenment did nothing to draw some Europeans out from the anti-Semitic cesspool of the dark ages.

Like Purim, these carnivals give permission to satirize the sacred, take the guardrails off the profane and raise the stakes on the transgressive – all in good fun. Well, not exactly like Purim. No self-respecting spiel has ever included such bile.

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In Aalst, a small Belgian town, the carnival this year featured grotesque caricatures of ultra-Orthodox Jews wearing large fur hats, deformed noses, with bodies shaped like insects. In other floats, Orthodox Jews were depicted as grasping boxes of diamonds. Marchers in the parade were in Chassidic costumes, with the customary hats, side curls and, of course, aggrandized noses.

Imagine a Purim spiel where Jews dressed up like the KKK carrying nooses, or painted their faces yellow and carried bags of rice or clutched calculators, or showed up wearing traditional Muslim garb adorned with one added accessory – a fake, but highly visible, suicide vest?

This isn't the first time that the carnival in Aalst went to such elaborately creative lengths to mock Jews. Last year, in fact, the unabashed anti-Semitism of the parade caught the attention of the United Nations, which bounced the town off its UNESCO Cultural Heritage list.

If the United Nations is standing up for Jews, then you know something has gone terribly awry.

And what were those offending entries? Hassidic Jews, of course, sitting on bags of money. A rat was on one shoulder. One float featured the words: "Don't ever tell the truth about the Jew."

It gets worse.

In 2013, Aalst parade marchers dressed up as Nazi officers carrying cans of Zyklon B, the poisonous gas used in those chambers disguised as showers for unsuspecting Jews. To complete this disgraceful picture: a float symbolizing the trains that transported Jews to their deaths followed from behind.

The cost and craftsmanship of these floats was equal to the ones in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Except that the Aalst floats have no corporate sponsorship. Individuals of lean means save up each year just to keep up with the Jew-hating Joneses.

College savings funds, be damned!

The Spanish town of Campo de Criptana was not to be outdone in its own denigration of Jews. Its carnival featured Nazi officers carrying guns, along with striped-pajama-wearing prisoners. A float carried a menorah and two crematorium chimneys – as if the chimneys alone didn't suggest what was smoldering inside.

On another float, underneath two giant chimneys, a woman dressed in Nazi regalia gyrated alongside a Doberman. Dancing Jewish victims wearing red hotpants, bustiers and gunshot wounds attached to their hearts danced to the delight of Jew-hating Spaniards.

Now get this: Town officials of Campo de Criptana responded to the international outcry by insisting that they were commemorating, not disparaging, victims of the Holocaust.

As for the Belgian town of Aalst, its mayor said, "I did not see an anti-Semitic or racist parade. To the contrary, I saw a high mass of free speech and creativity." The chairman of the carnival reassured critics that if any of the floats had "exceeded all limits of decency," they would have been disqualified.

Well, that's a relief. Of course, what float then didn't make the cut?

In the estimation of town officials and organizers, the carnivals were all in good fun – the "just kidding" of kitsch without any malignant intent. Honestly, can't Jews take a joke?

Actually, we can't.

Not long ago, two out of three of Europe's Jews were murdered during the Holocaust. The continent will never recover from that loss – not just in the colossal disappearance of Jewish talent and ingenuity, but in the shame and stain that will live with Europeans for eternity. Given this curse, mocking concentration-camp victims, trivializing the evil of the Nazis, depicting Jews as vermin, using blatant ethnic caricatures – all nothing but harmless, unbridled humor, in Europe, the crime scene of all that Jewish dead?

Europe is consigned to a permanent state of moral contrition and inquiry. With the recent resurgence of anti-Semitism worldwide, but notably in Europe, and with the last of the Holocaust survivors still alive, these alarming trends should place the entire continent on red alert, rather than fuel the flame with such carnival fare.

Ironically, many of these nations have hate-speech laws that avowedly protect human dignity. The stigmatizing and targeting of Jews in the public square, endangering them and defacing all of society, is a direct attack against the very meaning of citizenship and pluralism in liberal nations.

Unless, of course, those protections don't actually apply to Jews.

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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Only within the frenzied Trump administration could the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which ordinarily commands more headlines and causes more headaches, be reduced to a negligible footnote. The president moved the US embassy to Jerusalem; defunded UNRWA, along with any aid destined to reward Palestinians for murdering Israelis; shut down the PLO offices in Washington, DC; and blessed Israel's decision to extend sovereignty over the Golan Heights and its intention to annex the Jordan Valley as well.

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And all of that scarcely merited the world's attention. Indeed, the Persian Gulf states were so pleased that Trump was taking the hard-line against their common enemy, Iran, and with Israel starting to resemble a strategic partner, the Palestinians had outlived their usefulness as a blemish on the democratic bona fides of the Jewish state.

In Gaza, the weekly "March of Return" protests along the border with Israel in 2018, and more sporadically in 2019, were almost never the big news of the day. Meanwhile, the Palestinian Authority was becoming an afterthought – even to its own people.

For their part, the president's "ultimate deal"-makers – senior adviser and presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner, Middle East Special Envoy Jason Greenblatt and US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman – operated out of the spotlight and, unlike so many of all the president's other men, avoided firings, scandals and jail sentences.

They were far more likely to blow shofars than whistles.

And this is the reason why the Palestinians – famous for missing exponential opportunities – should seriously consider this deal. It is their only way to re-enter a conversation that no longer includes them. By not accepting Trump's team as honest brokers and choosing to skip the economic summit last summer in Bahrain that was largely for their benefit, everything that has taken place was done in their absence.

And no one seemed to miss them.

The many decades' strategy of rejectionism has failed miserably, and the world has grown tired of it. Even an unpopular American president has not rallied nations to their defense. Their moment as the world's most favorite refugees has passed them by. And even with all of the kangaroo-court resolutions condemning Israel in the United Nations, Israel has, improbably, never been more admired and sought after globally. Quietly, yes, but many countries now wish to be Israel's secret friend.

And the message to the Palestinians is this: The delegitimization game only plays well on campus, or with Roger Waters and a few talentless rock bands. No one else is buying it, or rather, choosing to boycott Israel. Israel innovates too superbly, and its people are far too industrious to be rejected.

This is what years of refusing to negotiate with Israel has gotten you. Magical thinking that the world would simply grant Palestinian statehood and impose conditions on Israel has achieved the exact opposite outcome. By waiting too long, a state in-waiting, attached with too many strings and a wholly discontinuous map, is now being foisted on you in a "take-it-or leave it" gambit with no leverage or allies of your own.

Palestinian petulance has run its course. The Trump administration has done them a favor by speaking honestly, "Do you want a state, or do you wish to remain as perpetual refugees and terrorists? Choose. You can't be both."

A people who so quickly gather in "Days of Rage," or to stab Israelis or mow them down in cars is not ready for prime time on the world stage. Your future will depend on whether you want a future. And that can only be demonstrated by building infrastructure, universities and hospitals, rather than rockets and terror tunnels.

Intifadas do not lead to peace with a neighbor who is not planning on leaving the neighborhood.

As real estate industry executives, Trump's deal-of-the-century troika made nation-building a priority. Yes, Israel got more land to ensure its safety, but the Palestinians and Arab states received $50 billion, which is a lot of garbanzo beans for the kind of building that will lead to true Palestinian prosperity.

The Trump administration treated the Palestinians like New Yorkers savvy enough to know when they are being offered the insider's price on a new condominium with free amenities. The problem, however, is that Palestinians have never been swayed by money – or land, for that matter. They didn't seem to mind when Jordan occupied the West Bank and Egypt occupied Gaza. Instead, they were always fixated on dead Israelis in a vanquished Jewish state.

Now after rejecting too many earlier peace deals that would have netted them more land and immediate sovereignty, they are going to have to choose a different road to save yet another generation from stagnation and dependency. After all, a continuous strategy that finds glory only in dead Jews is not a fulfilling national project.

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org

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Failing to do so leads directly to Sept. 11, 2001 – a day unlike no other, but also an atrocity that could have been avoided had the United States taken Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda more seriously. After all, he had demonstrated that he knew how to deal a blow to the United States through increasingly more devastating acts of terror.

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What part of that lesson did so many Democratic members of Congress, numerous political pundits and an assortment of news organizations fail to understand when it came to the drone strike that killed Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani? The commander of Iran's Quds Force was neither a foreign dignitary nor a military general operating under the laws of war. Killing him was not a violation of some time-honored protocol. Nor was it a startling international incident. With bin Laden and ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi dead, Soleimani was next in line on the "most wanted" terrorist list, and he got what he deserved.

No time should be wasted second-guessing this decision. America's national conscience should be clear.

Far too much blood and treasure had been lost under Soleimani's direction. Through his proxy militias, hundreds of Americans have been killed in Iraq. Syrian President Bashar Assad would never have been able to prevail over his country's civil war without Soleimani's tactical support. The staggering death toll of more than 500,000 and a refugee crisis in Europe were a direct outgrowth of Soleimani's handiwork. Hezbollah in Lebanon would have been without its formidable arsenal of precision-guided missiles, and it would not be operating as a state within a state. The Houthis in Yemen would have been disarmed long ago had it not been for Soleimani and Iran's promiscuous mischief-making in the region.

And thousands of Iranian protestors during both the Green Movement in 2009, as well as the dissenting voices being squelched and jailed right now, might have actually toppled the ayatollahs had Soleimani not been instrumental in Iran's civil defense.

Is there a more appropriate candidate for targeted killing? With such a murderous Middle Eastern résumé and appetite for American blood, evidence of an "imminent threat" before launching such an attack shouldn't even be necessary. What more did this guy have to do to merit an early demise? The drone strike may have come as a surprise to some members of Congress, but Soleimani surely knew that in his line of work, life expectancy is low, and death by natural causes is rare.

Still, many are asking, didn't US President Donald Trump need congressional approval to authorize such an operation?

Well, he certainly would never have received it with the zero-sum rituals on Capitol Hill. But the 2001 joint military authorization to fight terrorism empowered President Barack Obama to continue the war on terror with 563 drone strikes, which killed thousands of terrorists and hundreds of civilians, including the 2011 airstrike against Muslim cleric Anwar al-Alwaki, an American citizen who inspired the terrorism at Fort Hood in 2009 and the Boston Marathon in 2013.

What congressional authorization did Obama obtain, and where was the American outrage over those killings?

Moreover, the killing of Soleimani isn't going to ignite a war with Iran. That's because we're already at war with Iran and have been ever since the Iranian Revolution took 52 Americans hostage in 1979. Hostilities throughout the ensuing decades have varied, mostly through proxies and diplomatic skirmishes, but we have never had a friendly day with Iran since the fall of its last Shah – notwithstanding Obama's obsequious efforts to ingratiate Tehran, culminating in the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and the $1.8 billion Lotto cash payout.

Those conciliatory gestures didn't succeed in modifying Iran's behavior. Indeed, it had quite the opposite effect, emboldening its ballistic-missile testing and far-flung terror apparatus – and did nothing to deter its nuclear ambitions.

The removal of Soleimani from Iran's ongoing cold war with America, which has, as of late, gotten hotter under his direction, might actually shock the Iranian system into either a change in its diplomatic endeavors or regime change itself.

Regardless of how one feels about Trump, he continues to be the wild card on the international stage. And playing without a full deck has, at times, been to his advantage. In a world dominated by cynical politicians who overpromise and under-deliver, imagine a head of state who can actually draw a red line and not erase it when it gets crossed.

Last month, the US embassy in Baghdad was stormed, and in a separate incident, an American civilian was killed by Iranian proxies. Now Soleimani is dead, and Iran's response – missiles notwithstanding, but those that cause structural and not human damage on two Iraqi air bases where Americans were stationed, was cautiously tepid – and for good reason.

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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Yes, I realize that the Democratic Party has been home to American Jews since the New Deal. So cozy has this domestic arrangement been that nearly 80% self-identify as Democrats. Even pro-Israel Republican presidents – the current incumbent, especially – have been exasperated by this staunch party solidarity.

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But apparently, American Jews are not a single-issue constituency.

The party that American Jews have been calling home for decades now has some restrictive covenants – a new welcome mat adorned with progressive engraving and fine print. And soon, Jews may no longer feel so welcome.

The progressives – or Democratic Socialists, who some bluntly call themselves – are setting the agenda for the party on issues such as universal health care, free college tuition, aggressive taxation, climate change, open immigration, and even Israel. Why Israel became a foreign-policy priority can only be imagined, but three of the candidates – Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and Mayor of South Bend, Ind. Pete Buttigieg – recently announced that military aid should be conditioned on Israel's policies toward the Palestinians.

Where do the other Democratic candidates stand on Israel? Find out at this week's debate. Israel will surely be a talking point, and not a friendly one. It will be blamed for the impasse in peace and the use of excessive military force. Palestinian terrorism, of course, will go unmentioned.

Congress, too, is showing less love for Jews. The so-called "Squad" of four freshmen congresswomen, buttressed by the Black Caucus, has sounded dog whistles that anti-Semites hear clearly. New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez described Israel's defense of its southern border as a "massacre." Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar accused Jewish-Americans of dual loyalty and suggested that US foreign policy is directed by Jewish money that demands support for Israel.

The new inhospitality has even infected female empowerment. Ask the Jewish women who founded the Women's March. They found themselves lectured on how Jews funded the slave trade and that, as white privileged women, they should defer to those who deserve to lead a progressive movement. That leadership, repulsively, included the embrace of Louis Farrakhan. Meanwhile, Sanders' candidate whisperer, Linda Sarsour, proclaimed that feminists can't be Zionists.

On college campuses, gay Jewish students, Jewish feminists, and Jewish eco- and social-warriors have been booted from the intersectional freight train that rolls over anyone with a kind word to say about Israel or a critical one about Palestinian violence.

Don't be surprised if some Jews won't take the hint, even though there is no subtlety to the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. They are decidedly direct. That won't divert the thinking of some liberal Jews, however, who only care about one thing: defeating Donald Trump.

Enter Michael Bloomberg. In a crowded field of candidates, some playing to the cheap seats of the Democratic Left, he represents a resolute centrist of independent mind with a proven record on the environment, public health, gun control and even a tax policy designed to narrow the inequality gap. The latter is the central issue of our time. After all, in 10 years, "Occupy Wall Street" went from tent show to main event.

Yes, Bloomberg is a white billionaire, making him a piñata for progressives. But he is self-made, and a proven chief executive in both the private and public spheres. What's more, he has no history of shady deals, Access Hollywood tapes, hush-money payments to porn stars or insults to war heroes, women or the handicapped. His tax returns won't be declared a state secret. And since his campaign will be self-financed, he won't be beholden to anyone – foreign dictators included.

A Democratic Party headed by Bloomberg will offer progressives a choice without sacrificing a chance at regaining the White House. He's the best candidate to take on Donald Trump. Compared to everyone else, he's the only adult in the room.

Of course, Trump is not without some appeal to American Jews. After all, during his first term, he has played Santa in the Holy Land, bestowing Israel with many gifts that arguably no one else would have ever granted. Where's the gratitude, even if you find him repugnant?

While that's true, his policies have been more impulsive than ideological, guided by an unscripted worldview that favors chaos and despots, and disdains coherent strategy. How else to explain his flirtations with the alt-right from a man with Jewish grandchildren?

Meanwhile, during Israel's last war in Gaza in 2014, with Hamas rockets lighting up the sky and former President Barack Obama announcing a federal ban on travel to Israel, Bloomberg, at the time mayor of New York City, flew on his private jet to Israel for no reason other than to be there.

As for their eternal domicile in the Democratic Party, if Bloomberg isn't heading the ticket in 2020, Jews might find themselves heading for the exits at a convention where they've just been evicted. Of course, knowing the perseverance of Jews and social justice, some will choose to stay, anyway.

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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Well, that's a relief. Glad that's finally resolved.

Actually, the language "inconsistent with international law" dates back to 1978 and derives from a legal opinion issued by the State Department itself. It was an ambiguous phrase from the start, perhaps intentionally so.

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Lawyers generally deploy more precise language. Why didn't the State Department come out of Foggy Bottom and clear up the confusion? Do Israeli settlements violate international law or not?

To say that the settlements were inconsistent with the law suggests that no one really understood what the law was or didn't know how to apply it to this particular situation.

And that's exactly what happened. Three years later, in fact, with a new president in the White House – Ronald Reagan – the settlements were deemed not illegal. Since that time, presidents wavered from dodging the question to stating that the settlements were not helpful if the goal was to bring about a two-state solution between the Israelis and Palestinians.

Then came President Barack Obama who, nearly three years ago, failed to veto UN Security Council Resolution 2334, which categorically stated that Israel's settlements were a "flagrant violation of international law" and have "no legal validity." That was loudly unambiguous. It became Obama's farewell message to Israel: The reason there is no peace isn't because of Palestinian rejectionism, horrendous leadership, glorification of violence, indoctrination of Jew-hatred and a general aversion to nation-building of any kind. The fault lies with Jewish settlers in the West Bank and Israel's presence in eastern Jerusalem.

At no other time in Israel's history had the United States better demonstrated that it didn't have Israel's back. It didn't even have Israel's little toe.

As of this week, it seems that the United States, belatedly – and albeit only symbolically – vetoed Resolution 2334.

It won't matter, however. The international consensus will remain steadfast that the settlements are illegal because they violate Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention. Its main thrust is the obligation that an occupying power has to the territory it now occupies and to the civilians who live there.

Essentially, the occupier may not deport those civilians or forcibly transfer its own civilians into the occupied territory. It is this latter provision that the world believes Israel has violated with its settlers in the West Bank.

But any fair-minded reading of the Convention would suggest that Article 49 has little to do with the West Bank at all. And even a poor student of Jewish history, the Bible, World War II and its immediate aftermath would know that neither Israel nor the West Bank settlers is not what Article 49 had in mind.

First, if it's an occupation at all, it's a defensive one. Under international law, Israel has no obligation to withdraw until peaceable borders can be assured.

How's that withdrawal from Gaza working out?

But more specifically, it's not a true occupation at all. Israel also had a claim to the land; it did not invade another country, offensively, to take away its land. And the Palestinians were not living in a nation of their own that could be occupied.

There is a reason why the West Bank is also known as Judea – it's where the biblical Jews lived. A number of 20th-century treaties provided the legal nexus to re-establish a Jewish state – in the same place where it once was. That doesn't mean that indigenous Arabs don't have an entitlement to statehood. But it does mean that Israel did not aggressively invade another country and occupy its land.

Moreover, no Israeli government forcibly moved its citizens into the West Bank and Gaza. They may have incentivized their resettlement, but the takers would have lived in houses made of sand as long as they could return to their ancestral homeland. They sprinted home the first moment it was possible – willingly, longingly, and, as we saw in Gaza, they had to be torn away from the land when they were ultimately forced to leave.

These are simply not the conditions that gave rise to the Fourth Geneva Convention. None of the entities match the language and the reason for its drafting: Israel has a claim of right; the Palestinians aren't an occupied nation; and the settlers aren't a beachhead, plopped down by force.

And that's why the world's judgment on Israeli settlements involves something other than law.

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org

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