Which is the Bigger Threat: Iran or Hamas?
Most pro-Israel activists agree: Hamas is a bad thing, Iranian nukes are a bad thing. For Israeli and American policy-makers, the tough question is: Which threat should take priority?
At the American Jewish Committee, it depends who you ask.
Yehudit Barsky, director of the organization’s New York-based Division on Middle East and International Terrorism, says that “the legitimization of Hamas is a process that must be avoided at all costs.”
But Eran Lerman, the director of AJC’s Jerusalem-based Israel/Middle East office, implies otherwise, when he argues that with the fight to keep up international pressure on Iran “ it becomes more necessary than ever to deal with the Palestinian conflicts – the Israeli-Palestinian and the Palestinian-Palestinian (Fatah vs. Hamas) – in ways that will not solve them, at least not anytime soon in both cases, but may contain them so that attention can be focused elsewhere.”
Barsky’s paper is the one getting the major play on the AJC’s home page (at least today).
A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism so that we can be prepared for whatever news 2025 brings.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
