I’ve been following closely every utterance of the new Trump administration regarding the situation in the Middle East. In that regard, by the way, I strongly endorse and recommend Schmuel Katzkin’s treatment in Sunday’s The American Spectator. With Katzkin, I think it’s very much time to “hope big,” even as I acknowledge that past hopes for a lasting — and defensible — peace in the Middle East have been routinely shattered.

Historical Context of Israeli Conflicts
I’m not quite old enough to remember the 1956 war between Israel (with British and French support) and its Arab neighbors, although, down through the years, I’ve read everything about it I could lay my hands on, including extensive discussions of the regrettably negative role played by our own country during this “Suez Crisis.”
It’s hard to know what might have followed from a decision to support action against the Nasser regime; history is always contingent, and alternative choices inevitably lead to unpredictable outcomes. Hindsight, after all, is always 20/20. But I suspect things could have scarcely turned out worse, and there were all sorts of ways in which they might have turned out better.
Much the same might be said of the 1967 and 1973 wars, and indeed of all the other such conflicts ever since. So much blood has been shed, so much violence unleashed, particularly in the form of Islamist terrorism. I’m staunchly on the side of the Israelis in all of this, not because one can’t find some Israeli actions objectionable, but emphatically because the bottom line has always been a desire on the part of the Israelis to be left alone to live in peace.
Gradually, through force of arms in successive wars, the Israelis taught neighboring countries that attacking Israel openly was a losing proposition. But the Islamists shifted the terms of the battle, particularly once it became one waged by Iran’s mullahs through their various proxies, Katzkin’s “three H’s,” Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis. Terrorism beca...