Diplomatic Note       

Malcolm Hoenlein is no alarmist, but he’s sounding the alarm.

The man who’s had the ear of democrats and despots across the world for what seems like forever, is deeply worried by the last year. Hyperbole isn’t his style; interests are more compelling when it comes to calculations of power. But now, as a child of Holocaust survivors, he reaches for some dark imagery. “It’s not Germany 1938,” he says, “but it feels like 1935.”

The reason is an unprecedented convergence of threats to the Jewish world. Even after the historic peace deals with Gulf States justified Hoenlein’s long-held hopes, the Iranian threat is turning critical. And for the first time, anti-Semitism is not just a European problem. While threats to milah and shechitah are ever-present in the Old World, the mainstreaming of far-left anti-Israel hostility as embodied by the Squad and the spillover of Gaza tension onto New York’s streets are new to American shores.

In a conversation that’s part stream-of-consciousness, part tour d’horizon after a year of diplomatic breakthroughs, he returns more than expected to the home front.