The proverb: “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

Think Roosevelt and Churchill helping dictator Stalin repel Hitler in World War II. Or the Reagan administration backing Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein in his war against anti-American Iran in the 1980s.

True, a Senate race isn’t the same as a shooting war. Not exactly. But as Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz put it in the early 1800s: “Politics is war without bloodshed while war is politics with bloodshed.”

In war or politics, the old proverb speaks to a similar tactic: Do what’s necessary to remove your biggest threat.

In the race to fill Feinstein’s former seat, the Democratic front-runner’s biggest threat is not the leading Republican contender, but another Democrat. It’s practically impossible for a Republican to win a California Senate seat in a state where Democrats hold a nearly 2-to-1 voter registration advantage and the GOP has imploded.

That’s why Rep. Adam B. Schiff, D-Burbank — the front-runner based on polling and campaign cash — is going full bore to boost Republican former baseball star Steve Garvey in the March 5 primary election. Garvey, who has some name identification among older baseball fans but only pocket change in his campaign kitty and no political experience, would be an easy out in the November general election.

So Schiff is focused on promoting his preferred November opponent, Garvey. It reminds me of gerrymandering — now outlawed in California but still practiced in many states — in which politicians choose their own voters in redrawing legislative and congressional districts.

Politicians helping their weakest opponent — while odorous — makes strategic sense in California. Our open primary system allows everyone to vote on the same ballot, regardless of their party. And the top two vote-getters, regardless of party, advance to the November election. So it opens the door for two Democrats to compete against each other.

Schiff’s biggest political threat is fellow Democratic Rep. Katie Porter of Irvine. She could be a tough competitor in November. Porter currently is in a close fight with Garvey for the No. 2 runoff spot.

That’s why Schiff’s television ads are promoting Garvey among Republican viewers as a two-time Donald Trump supporter who could swing the Senate to GOP control. That’s ostensibly a knock on Garvey, but it’s intended to rally support for him among Republican viewers. Garvey doesn’t have any money to promote himself on TV, so Schiff is doing it for him.

Meanwhile, the way I view Schiff’s latest TV ad, he’s now also subtly promoting Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Oakland, who has been trailing the field in fourth place. It’s another way of helping Garvey.

Schiff is hoping that Lee will draw liberal and female votes away from Porter. Women dominate the Democratic voter base.

Schiff’s new TV spot uses footage from the four candidates’ first debate last month.

A narrator begins: “Democrats agree. Conservative Republican Steve Garvey is the wrong choice for the Senate.”

Then the camera cuts to Lee, who looks and sounds solid: “Our Republican opponent here on this stage has voted for Donald Trump twice.”

Schiff doesn’t spend much time on himself: “Mr. Garvey, you voted for him twice.”

Then comes Porter. Schiff’s ad maker couldn’t have chosen a worse clip of her. She looks agitated and awkward, waving her hand, presumably at Garvey. And she’s not understandable because someone is talking over her.

“It’s a really clever ad,” says Republican consultant Rob Stutzman. “It features Lee prominently. And Porter, you can barely see her face. … It’s three-dimensional chess.”

A Schiff campaign spokesperson denied that helping Lee was part of the plan. Regardless, it might well do that. And it’s likely to hurt Porter.

In the interest of good government and democracy, I’d rather see Porter or Lee run against Schiff in November. Garvey seems to possess little knowledge of national issues or have any policy agenda. He’s floating through the contest on his remaining name ID and GOP brand among Republican voters. Porter or Lee would generate a more interesting face-off and give voters a credible choice.

After Schiff began promoting Garvey on TV, Porter wrote on X: “Adam Schiff knows he will lose to me in November. That’s what this brazenly cynical ad is about — furthering his own political career, boxing out qualified Democratic women candidates. … We need honest leadership, not political games.”

But now Porter has descended from the high road and is playing the same political game she initially castigated Schiff for employing. She’s running an online ad designed to boost virtually unknown GOP candidate Eric Early among Republican voters. Her aim is to help Early draw Republican votes away from Garvey.

“MAGA Republican Eric Early proudly stands with Donald Trump while Steve Garvey refuses to tell us who he supports,” the Porter ad says. “Garvey claimed he might even vote for Joe Biden.”

It’s true that Garvey has dodged answering whom he supports for president this year.

Schiff and Porter are both cleverly playing by the rules. It’s not dirty. But as Porter first said, it’s blatantly cynical.

Gov. Gavin Newsom used the same tactic in 2018 while running against two high-profile Democrats — former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and state Treasurer John Chiang — in the gubernatorial primary.

Newsom ran a TV ad promoting obscure Republican John Cox and pushing him into the November runoff. Newsom ostensibly attacked Cox for “standing with Donald Trump.” That sold him to Republican voters.

Republican Garvey is now Democrat Schiff’s best friend — and Early is Porter’s — until both GOP also-rans are dropped cold on March 6.

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©2024 Los Angeles Times. Visit at latimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

The acceptance of large-scale bombing of the Gaza Strip and of a ground invasion likely to begin soon suggests that Palestinian children are lesser victims, devalued by their association with Hamas and its history of terrorism. Consider that more than 1,500 children in Gaza have been killed, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health, and around one-third of Gaza’s homes have been destroyed or damaged in just two weeks — and this is merely the softening-up before what is expected to be a much bloodier ground invasion.

I’ve flown into beautiful, sun-washed Tel Aviv, Israel, where the graffiti reads “Destroy Hamas.” Israelis have been shattered by the Hamas terrorism and kidnappings, an attack that felt existential and explains the determination to dismantle Hamas, whatever the cost. The anxiety in Tel Aviv is palpable, peaceful though it seems, while Gaza is an inner ring of hell and probably on a path to something much worse.

U.S. principles

The United States speaks a good deal about principles, but I fear that President Joe Biden has embedded a hierarchy of human life in official American policy. He expressed outrage at the massacres of Jews by Hamas, as he should have, but he has struggled to be equally clear about valuing Palestinian lives. And it’s not always evident whether he is standing four-square with Israel as a country or with its failed prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, a longtime obstacle to peace.

What are we to make of the Biden administration’s call for an additional $14 billion in assistance for Israel and simultaneous call for humanitarian aid for Palestinians? Defensive weapons for Israel’s Iron Dome system would make sense, but in practice, is the idea that we will help pay for humanitarians to mop up the blood caused in part by our weapons?

What are we to tell Dr. Iyad Abu Karsh, a physician in Gaza who lost his wife and son in a bombing and then had to treat his injured 2-year-old daughter? He didn’t even have time to care for his niece or sister, for he had to deal with the bodies of his loved ones.

“I have no time to talk now,” he told a New York Times colleague, his voice trembling over the phone. “I want to go bury them.”

In his speech Thursday, Biden called for the United States to stand firmly behind Ukraine and Israel, two nations attacked by forces aiming to destroy them. Fair enough. But suppose Ukraine responded to Russian war crimes by laying siege to a Russian city, bombing it into dust and cutting off water and electricity while killing thousands and obliging doctors to operate on patients without anesthetic.

I doubt we Americans would shrug and say, “Well, Putin started it. Too bad about those Russian children, but they should have chosen somewhere else to be born.”

Large human toll

Here in Israel, because the Hamas attacks were so brutal and fit into a history of pogroms and Holocaust, they led to a resolve to wipe out Hamas even if this means a large human toll. “Gaza will become a place where no human being can exist,” declared Giora Eiland, a former head of the Israeli National Security Council. “There is no other option for ensuring the security of the state of Israel.”

I think that view reflects a practical and moral miscalculation. While I would love to see the end of Hamas, it’s not feasible to eliminate radicalism in Gaza, and a ground invasion is more likely to feed extremism than to squelch it — at an unbearable cost in civilian lives.

I particularly want to challenge the suggestion, more implicit than explicit, that Palestinian lives matter less because many Palestinians sympathize with Hamas. People do not lose their right to life because they have odious views, and in any case, almost half of Palestinians are children. Those kids in Gaza, infants included, are among the more than 2 million people enduring a siege and collective punishment.

A prolonged ground invasion seems to me a particularly risky course, likely to kill large numbers of Israeli soldiers, hostages and especially Palestinian civilians. We are better than that, and Israel is better than that. Leveling cities is what the Syrian government did in Aleppo or Russia did in Grozny; it should not be a U.S.-backed undertaking by Israel in Gaza.

The best answer to this test is to try even in the face of provocation to cling to our values. That means that despite our biases, we try to uphold all lives as having equal value. If your ethics see some children as invaluable and others as disposable, that’s not moral clarity but moral myopia. We must not kill Palestinian children to try to protect Israeli children.

Nicholas Kristof is a New York Times columnist.

It’s good news for America’s workers, who were quick to feel the pinch from record-high inflation but slow to reap the benefits of the record profits that came with it. Since last August we’ve seen 42 work stoppages of at least 1,000 employees across the country, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. There’s a theme here, as workers have been squeezed too hard for too long — as if the corporate brain trust thought “The Hunger Games” were a how-to manual.

It’s not just that wages have been slow to rise, and it’s not just that housing and food cost increases have outpaced inflation. Look at the barriers we’ve created to adequate child care.

As of the end of last month, states are coping with the loss of $39 billion in federal funding for child care, a financial catastrophe that threatens the solvency of 70,000 programs, employment for more than 200,000 workers and the care for more than 3 million children.

“There was a child-care crisis even before the pandemic,” Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) said. Last month she and other Senate Democrats introduced a bill to try to soften the blow of losing this aid. “This is an urgent economic priority at every level: Child care is what allows parents to go to work, businesses to hire workers, and it’s an investment in our kids’ futures. The child-care industry holds up every sector of our economy.”

Before the pandemic, the Department of Health and Human Services reported that what families spent on child care was roughly 40% higher than what was considered affordable. Combine that with the fact that this year’s average wage increases trail last year’s pace. And the fact that the gap in buying power caused by record inflation is forecast to last until late 2024.

What exactly are working parents supposed to do?

While many white-collar industries offer child-care options, the fastest-growing job sector — leisure and hospitality — isn’t exactly a leader in this area. In Germany, municipalities are required by law to provide child care. In America, we’re less accommodating. Sort of a “don’t have children unless you can afford them” attitude.

The thing is, we’re running out of people who can afford to raise kids without assistance.

September marked the 33rd consecutive month in which the U.S. economy added jobs. The labor-market participation rate is up, and there are more than 9 million job openings across the country. This is all great news — unless you need child care. Then you have to figure out whether any of the jobs available to you would pay more than you’d be spending on child care, assuming you’re not among the 50% of Americans who live in so-called child-care deserts — the areas in America where pre-K bodies outnumber available spots.

“It’s a nonstop financial and logistical burden for the whole family,” Murray said.

Take your pick — Medicaid, welfare, Social Security — conservatives have historically spoken about entitlements and safety nets as if those who would benefit are lazy and not part of the workforce. The reality of just how inaccurate that assessment is about to smack them in the face because of the connection between labor and child care.

These folks would rather cut government programs than finance social services, but here’s the rub: If would-be workers can’t afford to work, how exactly is austerity going to address the issue?

When we talk of the work ethic of the “greatest generation,” we often skip over the part where the federal government came in and subsidized child care — built centers and everything. Without that assistance, most of the 6 million women who kept this country going during World War II wouldn’t have been able to enter the work force.

By contrast, today, 68% of Oklahomans live in a child-care desert. The state is also estimated to be 40,000 workers short. Do you think that’s a coincidence?

The proliferation of the gig economy, in combination with passage of the Affordable Care Act, has worked to create a pathway where more Americans are able to walk away from toxic work environments and be their own bosses. The Great Resignation and the wave of labor strikes further highlight the shift in the relationship between labor and capital. Yet as seismic as those changes are, the most significant earthquake is yet to come. Paid family leave and affordable child care are no longer just items on liberals’ wish list.

Like the rest of the industrialized world, America is coming to grips with the fact that if you want people to work, that idea has to work for their children too.

LZ Granderson is a Los Angeles Times columnist. ©2023 Los Angeles Times. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency.

Motherhood, as almost any mother will tell you, is one of the hardest things women do. Especially because she’s rarely doing just that.

Most women are juggling it all: Careers, intimate relationships, friendships, health, home, and then, of course, the kids.

This could be part of the reason why a new Pew Research report, “Public Has Mixed Views on the Modern American Family,” showed that men and women are choosing their careers over having children. But it’s not the whole picture, and it’s too bad for society and for potential parents.

Only about 26% think having kids is an essential part of fulfillment and just 23% think being married remains part of a key component of happiness. Americans now think high job satisfaction and close friendships are more fulfilling than being married or being a mom or dad. In fact, over 70% of people said having a career will help them achieve life fulfillment. This is unfortunate.

There’s two things at play here, although both may carry different weight with different women. The first is that due to the economy, it probably doesn’t feel like it’s as easy to be a mom as it was for our mothers and grandmothers. Inflation is still hefty, grocery prices are skyrocketing and child care costs are extraordinary.

Without a support system or even a supportive, selfless partner, a lot of women are probably looking around at their environment and their wallet and saying, No thanks, I can’t be a mom. That won’t be fulfilling. It will be impossible.

This is understandable to a degree. These are tough times, and Republicans and Democrats alike need to figure out if there are policies that can better help families without plunging America into more debt.

But it’s not all on the government to help us do what humans have been doing for millennia.

And this brings me to a second, far more prickly point, directly related to these new numbers: We’ve become a culture that likes things quick and easy. From food to wealth-building, relationships to careers. We want what our parents had faster and we want to do it with less work.

Thanks to a number of factors preceding our era, including women who paved the way for us, we’re more technologically advanced than ever, women have more education and can earn more money than previous generations.

Discounting the struggling economy, a lot of life is easier than ever before. America is no utopia but compared to some other places and previous eras, it’s a great time to be a woman — and a mom.

So then why do people think parenting isn’t fulfilling? Why are men and women choosing to be childless? Parenting is a lot of hard work and effort doesn’t guarantee success.

In today’s DoorDash society, 18 plus years seems like a long time to see if the seed you planted bears fruit. Parenting is a wait-and-see process without a manual, a receipt, or in some cases, tangible rewards. After almost two decades of sleepless nights, almost $300,000 per kid, and countless trips to soccer, band, football, piano, and more, no parent really knows if their bird is going to take flight or crash land.

Parenting requires a level of effort and selflessness people today simply don’t want to give willingly. That, coupled with the economy and structure of parenting — like a lack of affordable child care — and potential parents have decided it just won’t be fulfilling enough to even try.

But gauging whether one should become a mom (or a dad) based on whether it will be as fulfilling is like deciding not to eat fruits and vegetables because they just don’t taste as good as chocolate cake. Data even supports this. In her book, “The Top Five Regrets of the Dying: A Life Transformed by the Dearly Departing,” author and former palliative care nurse Bronnie Ware said people on their death bed always wished they hadn’t worked so hard.

Parenting wasn’t designed to be fulfilling. It’s not meant to fill an adult’s need for love, it’s designed to give love and care to another being, a vulnerable child. It’s designed to give adults a purpose that can go far beyond a career.

This often turns out to be exciting and fun, excruciating and difficult, simultaneously. Good parents do the best they can, embrace the hard times and savor the moments of joy. They often find that the journey and relationship with these special human beings goes far beyond the mere idea of fulfillment, but is purposeful and meaningful both to parents and children.

It’s disappointing to see so many adults choose a career over children. Both are important, but men and women shouldn’t opt out of parenting just because they’re hoping their job will be more fulfilling.

It likely won’t be and, by the time they realize this, it will be too late.

Nicole Russell is an opinion writer at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. ©2023 Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency.

However, I do understand the many Americans who see what Hamas did and think about the danger at our southern border — the Americans who are genuinely worried about the drug cartels’ growing influence in border towns and beyond. I do understand the part of America who saw last weekend’s horror and wondered how vulnerable we are to infiltration and attack, given the surge of asylum seekers and the U.S.’s inadequate systems for processing them.

I do not agree with Nikki Haley, the GOP presidential candidate and former ambassador to the U.N., on much. However, I found a lot of truth in her comments on Sunday.

“I have been terribly worried about the fact that Iran has said the easiest way to get into America is through the southern border,” she said on “Meet the Press.” “People are coming through; they’re not being vetted. … Israel is the front line of defense for the Iranian regime and terrorists that want to hurt us and want to hurt our friends, and we need to be honest with the American people about that.”

She’s right. This point is one reason conservatives are able to get elected by campaigning on immigration and border security despite offensive language. Pragmatism. They’re taking seriously the Americans who are motivated not by racism or xenophobia but by well-founded fears of a dangerous world.

After all, it wasn’t just Israel’s intelligence that missed what Hamas was planning. U.S. intelligence apparently missed it as well. It’s only pragmatic to ask what else we may be overlooking — and where. We just don’t have a great history of being able to answer that question without racism.

Incarcerating Japanese Americans after Pearl Harbor. Rampant Islamophobia after 9/11, continuing right up through former President Donald Trump’s Muslim ban. Shameful chapters of wrongheaded overreaction. Can we show now that we’ve learned from those mistakes? The wave of migrants coming to the U.S. will test that.

This summer we saw Democrats across the country, particularly Mayor Eric Adams of New York, being critical of the Biden administration’s handling of asylum seekers. After announcing in August that the city had cared for more than 100,000 since April 2022, Adams said the issue “will destroy New York City.” Maybe that’s political theater. However I found his comments about the longevity of the crisis to be uncomfortably honest: “I don’t see an ending to this.” America’s demand for drugs and war on drugs keep “this” thriving.

Last month, the mayor of El Paso, a border town accustomed to receiving 2,000 migrants a day, said the city had reached a “breaking point” and could not continue to pay for shelter space and other services. Having received 8,000 migrants in a two-week period recently, San Diego County was similarly overwhelmed and declared a humanitarian crisis for asylum seekers late last month.

Desperate civilians in Central America and Mexico take great risks to escape the drug cartel violence swirling all around them, much like Iraqis and Syrians who fled Islamic State and other destabilizing groups in recent years — which is why Republicans in the House and Senate brought bills this year to designate cartels as terrorist organizations. The backers of the bills were war hawks mostly, and some of the proposed responses such as bombing Mexico are downright reckless. But the chaos of cartel violence, such as Hamas-style public kidnappings, looks familiar because it is. It’s terrorism.

That’s why Haley’s comments ring true for a lot of people, including me. Whether or not she uses her presidential campaign to guide a thoughtful conversation about border security remains to be seen. But I do know one needs to happen.

LZ Granderson is Los Angeles Times columnist. ©2023 Los Angeles Times. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency.

The prevailing “concept” (known in Hebrew as the “konceptzia”) was that Arab armies would not undertake a war that they were not certain to win. This turned out to be a colossal mistake, as Egyptian and Syrian forces overwhelmed Israeli defenses for three days, inflicting heavy losses on the army and leading many to believe that Israel’s end had come.

And now in 2023, a major enemy of Israel, Hamas, launched a stunning attack on a day marked by the convergence of the Jewish sabbath and the holiday of Simchat Torah (one of the most celebratory days in the Jewish calendar). Unlike in 1973, this attack was directed against civilians, as well as the military, and the results have been devastating. The death toll from the massacre is rising by the hour.

Thousands of rockets were unleashed against Israel, reaching from the south of the country to the metropolitan center of Tel Aviv. More shockingly, Hamas militants easily overran Israeli defenses, invading military bases and 22 communities near the Gaza border; they went door to door looking for Jews to murder or kidnap back to the Gaza Strip. Every Israeli Jew and many Jews in the diaspora know someone who was harmed; at least three relatives of friends of mine were murdered, and three more kidnapped.

While the timing and element of surprise hark back to 1973, the scope, sophistication and brutality of the Hamas assault were unprecedented. Israeli leaders have made amply clear that there will be a massive response, one that will be different from previous Gaza operations by orders of magnitude.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has promised “mighty vengeance for this black day.” Given that prior Israeli military operations in Gaza have led, as did Operation Protective Edge in 2014, to thousands of deaths of Gazans and billions of dollars of property destruction, it is terrifying to imagine how many Palestinian lives will be lost — and how much of Gaza will remain intact.

The impending military operation cannot mask the monumental failure of Israeli intelligence, perhaps greater in scale than 1973. It seems beyond belief, given Israel’s huge investment in human and electronic intelligence assets, that an attack of this size could not be readily detected, even weeks before being launched.

As in 1973, this failure has torn off the veneer of Israeli invincibility. In the wake of the Yom Kippur War, the new awareness of Israeli vulnerability led to a major strategic recalibration, a shattering of the old paradigm of unavoidable hostility. Israel came to believe that achieving peace with its major enemy, Egypt, was a viable and necessary path forward. Egypt, for its part, had regained a measure of credibility following the 1967 War and now could consider talks with Israel. By 1978, the two countries entered into negotiations that yielded a peace treaty.

Now, in the wake of the Hamas attack on Saturday, the newly exposed Israeli vulnerability could lead to its own strategic recalibration. The Palestinians do not pose a serious threat to the existence of Israel, but they can inflict grave damage on the Israeli body and psyche. They are not going to disappear. Nor are they going to surrender their claims to self-determination. And they are not going to give up the fight against Israel’s dehumanizing occupation of 56 years.

One way forward is the path of vengeance declared by Benjamin Netanyahu. It will lead to further devastation and the rising up of a new generation of Palestinians intent on retribution, which will only retrigger the cycle of violence that has engulfed this region for a century. Vengeance will only lead to more vengeance. Sadly, it is the likeliest course.

Another path forward, which requires bold and courageous leadership, is again breaking with the old paradigm of eternal enmity. It would entail recognition by Israel that it cannot batter Palestinians into submission, who deserve and must receive full rights as individuals and as a national collective. Bringing an end to the stranglehold of the occupation may be the best chance to break the cycle of violence.

Today, it is very hard to imagine such a step in this moment of grief and rage. But one makes peace with one’s enemies, not one’s friends. And as far-fetched as it may seem, it was precisely this kind of rethinking that was perhaps the most important legacy of the Yom Kippur War.

David N. Myers teaches Jewish history at UCLA, where he serves as director of the Luskin Center for History and Policy and the Initiative to Study Hate. ©2023 Los Angeles Times. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency.

How that happened is cause for deep embarrassment in Israel’s security community and will prompt a painful internal investigation. Israel lost control of military outposts, armored vehicles and settlements, and the conflict is far from over. About 800 people have been killed in Israel, nearly 2,400 wounded and at least 150 have been taken hostage, the New York Times reports.

Yet Saturday’s assault was also an important reminder concerning Hamas. It’s a U.S.-designated terrorist group but no band of hotheads. It is a well-resourced organization with a paramilitary armed force that is as calculating as it is ruthless. That’s what kept it in control of Gaza since 2007 despite being under constant threat from Israel, as well as from still more radical Salafist and other Islamist groups within Gaza.

Only Hamas knows the details of its strategy for Saturday’s attack, but the potential fallout is plain to see. A war in Gaza threatens at a stroke to upend the direction of travel in the Middle East. It puts Israel in the invidious position of having to choose between appearing weak — a dangerous strategy in the region — and inflicting the kind of mass casualties in the crowded Gaza Strip that will enrage Israel’s entire Palestinian population, forcing tough decisions on Arab leaders in the Gulf and beyond. At least 560 Palestinians have been killed, according to authorities in Gaza, and at least 2,900 others have been injured.

Israel has had success normalizing relations with parts of the Arab world while supporting the expansion of Jewish settlements on the West Bank and, at best, slow walking prospects for Palestinian statehood. Since 2020, Israel has signed U.S.-brokered recognition agreements with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan. Saudi Arabia, home to Mecca, has been considering a deal. Even Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who for years had positioned himself as champion of the Palestinian cause for domestic political gain, met with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the first time last month.

Saturday’s calls from Erdogan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and others for de-escalation came quickly and were doubtless genuine. All of them know the political pressures they will come under to condemn and break ties with Israel if Palestinian casualties mount. That now seems inevitable. Netanyahu said his country was at war, while Major General Ghasan Alyan said Hamas had “opened the gates of hell to the Gaza strip,” in a clip to camera posted on the Israeli Defense Forces’ feed on X (formerly Twitter).

Alyan went on to say that Hamas will bear responsibility for the consequences, but no matter how true that may be — and it is — the question of who fired first on Saturday will count for little in the Muslim world. There, popular outrage over Israeli actions in recent months and years, in particular around the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, had been mounting. Alyan’s words will resonate less than those of Mohammed Deif, a Hamas military commander, who said that “Operation Al-Aqsa Flood” was launched because “enough is enough.”

Already, the Saudi government statement calling for calm on Saturday sought to position Hamas’s actions as retaliatory, recalling the kingdom’s “repeated warnings of the dangers of the explosion of the situation, as a result of the continued occupation, the deprivation of the Palestinian people of their legitimate rights, and the repetition of systematic provocations against its sanctities.”

Hamas, which has never acknowledged Israel’s right to exist, will have predicted and factored all this into its decision to attack. I say this not because I have Deif’s cell number, but because I have encountered the group’s calculating nature.

In 2011, I went to report in Gaza, unwittingly entering from Israel early on the morning that the U.S. killed Osama bin Laden. Later that day, a Hamas official approached to offer a six-man security detail or escort to the border, because they had picked up Salafists who were “looking for the American journalist” so they could make a video. I had a friend with Fatah intelligence connections check, and they confirmed the Hamas arrests, so I left Gaza.

I retell this only because it was clear even from the security official who sat down with me that Hamas had no liking for U.S. journalists, nor any moral issue with hosting an exemplary retaliation for Bin Laden’s death. Yet this was May 2011. Hamas was in reconciliation talks with Fatah then, under international scrutiny and the group didn’t want the kind of attention a video would draw.

Now, they do have a tactical interest in that kind of attention. Events had not been going Hamas’s way in recent years, and a Saudi-Israeli normalization would have been a major defeat. Hamas’s aggression will boost its support base, and the appalling videos of Israeli casualties it organized to take on Saturday will help with recruitment. Responding to Hamas while keeping Israeli-Arab normalization on track will be extraordinarily difficult for Netanyahu to pull off, and the more so the longer the fighting continues.

Marc Champion is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering Europe, Russia and the Middle East. He was previously Istanbul bureau chief for the Wall Street Journal. ©2023 Bloomberg. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency.

A common perception among many Californians is that substance abuse is a chief cause of people losing their housing and living on the streets. But research debunks this myth.

Findings from the recent California Statewide Study of People Experiencing Homelessness encompassing more than 3,200 adults — the largest and most representative sample of homeless individuals since the 1990s — found that 50% have not used any drugs (methamphetamine, cocaine, crack cocaine or nonprescription opioids) in the last six months.

While drug use is much lower in California’s housed population, by no means does every person who is homeless actively use drugs.

For those who did use drugs in the last six months, 40% of people started using — more than 3 times a week —after becoming homeless. Thirty-one percent of those individuals reported using methamphetamine and 11% used nonprescription opioids more than three times per week. Those who spent most of their nights unsheltered in a non-vehicle (sleeping outside, in tents, in places not meant for human habitation) and individuals who were homeless for more than a year had higher proportions of methamphetamine and opioid use.

The California Statewide Study also conducted interviews with more than 300 homeless adults, exploring their daily life, including drug use. That work, along with other research, finds that individuals frequently use methamphetamine to help them stay awake at night to protect themselves and their property from assault and theft.

People also report using drugs to cope with depression, anxiety and the trauma of being homeless.

Drug use is correlated with the length of time someone is homeless and the extremity of their living conditions. In my research and volunteer work with agencies focused on homelessness, I have seen how drug use in the unhoused population is highly criminalized and stigmatized. By gaining a more accurate picture of drug use among unhoused people, policymakers and community groups can provide better harm-reduction and treatment services, and housing resources to those struggling to get by.

Most shelters and housing initiatives require people to practice drug abstinence before they can qualify for these programs. This policy is not feasible for many, and those who achieve abstinence may fall back into drug use if they remain homeless and are not able to find stable housing.

Other literature on social determinants of health also link housing as a primary factor for avoiding drug use. Programs that emphasize “housing first” models, or providing housing regardless of one’s drug use, have shown that even those who use drugs have good retention in maintaining their housing once they are stably and safely housed.

Houston offers a prime example of successfully applying housing first to move more than 25,000 people experiencing homelessness into their own housing units over the last decade. Together with county agencies, services providers, nonprofits and corporations, Houston prioritized housing without requiring individuals to be abstinent from drug use or in a treatment program. Nearly all individuals have been able to retain their housing after two years.

Last year, 171,000 people were experiencing homelessness in California. Recently, Gov. Gavin Newsom approved $3.5 billion in California’s budget to end and prevent homelessness, aiming to move more than 2,600 individuals into housing.

But many Californians will still remain unhoused. The best way to service this population is to move away from criminalizing and stigmatizing drug use. Recently, the San Francisco Police Department arrested 450 individuals who used drugs and who were intoxicated in public. However, this furthers disparities and injustice toward people experiencing homelessness, drives people away from accessing proper resources, maintains the barriers that keep people homeless and increases their risk of drug-related overdose.

Instead, state and local governments should invest in harm-reduction programs, such as needle exchange programs, overdose prevention centers and overdose-reversal medications. These strategies can save lives, reduce infectious diseases (HIV/hepatitis C), reduce use of emergency care, reduce overdose deaths and connect people to services even while they remain unhoused.

Regardless of an individual’s drug use, policymakers and advocates should prioritize getting people experiencing homelessness into safe, secure and stable housing. Only then could we start to manage and treat drug use for unhoused people effectively and appropriately given their individual needs.

Ryan D. Assaf is a postdoctoral fellow with the Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative at UC San Francisco. ©2023 Los Angeles Times. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

On Tuesday, the right-wing extremists made good on their long-dangled threat to depose McCarthy — whom they never wanted or trusted as speaker in the first place. The “motion to vacate” introduced Monday by Rep. Matt Gaetz, the self-appointed King of the Wingers, wound up passing with the support of eight Republicans and all of the 208 Democrats present. With this decapitation, the first ever in the House, McCarthy has indeed made history.

But the conference’s clown car rolls on, with Republicans now scrambling to select their next driver. With no obvious candidate who can win full Republican support, the process promises to be messy. For now, Rep. Patrick McHenry is serving as the interim speaker, thanks to a 2003 rule that, ironically, required McCarthy to designate who his temporary successor would be in the event his chair became vacant. For this and other reasons, McHenry needs to be replaced by a duly elected speaker ASAP.

And so here we go again. The House’s chaos is reminiscent of McCarthy’s ordeal back in January, when he went 15 rounds with his right-wing rebels, until he finally wore them down enough to squeak into power.

So where do the Republicans go from here? Who the heck knows? House members headed home for the week, with Republicans reportedly looking to hold a forum for speaker candidates Tuesday and, with a little luck, the actual election on Wednesday. Maybe by then they will have identified a unifying candidate. But don’t hold your breath. It’s not like the interparty fissures have been helped by this latest stunt.

If anything, after all this, Gaetz and his fellow disrupters are going to be more full of themselves than ever. They have done what no other rebel band has managed before. They are triumphant and empowered, which bodes very poorly for the coming speaker’s race — not to mention the future functionality of this Congress.

As for the Democrats, before the ouster vote there was much speculation that they might cut a deal with McCarthy to help him keep his fancy title. That obviously didn’t pan out when he publicly declared that he would not offer them anything. But if the Republican dysfunction going forward gets bad enough or lasts long enough, maybe Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic leader, should consider wading into the negotiating pool — offering support for a candidate palatable to the Republican conference’s nonwingers. Provided, of course, that Jeffries’ team gets something substantive in return.

Which raises another fun question: If you were a Democratic lawmaker in a position to help the Republicans dig themselves out of this hole, what would be your price? Would you try to extract policy concessions? Political ones? What about changes to the way the House operates?

In recent days, ideas from all of these categories were whizzing around Washington as people speculated about what the Democrats might try to squeeze out of McCarthy. Some of the possibilities were largely policy-focused, such as continued military support for Ukraine — or, say, sticking with the spending levels Republicans agreed to in this summer’s debt-ceiling deal.

Others were overtly political — and borderline ridiculous — such as making the speaker promise that the National Republican Congressional Committee wouldn’t spend money against vulnerable Democrats next year.

There was much buzz around pushing for an end to the impeachment investigation of President Joe Biden. And I absolutely get the logic here, seeing as how McCarthy announced the inquiry in a sad attempt to distract his hard-liners from attacking him. (How did that work out for you, Kev?) That said, the inquiry has so far been such a humiliating flop that it hardly seems worth spending political capital on pulling the plug — which would likely just set the right-wing baying that the investigation would have eventually been a roaring success if only the Democrats hadn’t conspired with establishment Republicans, the Deep State, George Soros and probably Taylor Swift to shut it down.

There was even a smattering of possibilities that fell into the make-the-House-saner, benefit-both-sides category — which are the ones I’d love to see the Dems really squeeze the Republicans on if they get the chance. We’re talking about basic changes to make the institution run better, such as removing one or more of the hard-liners from the Rules Committee and returning the motion to vacate to its pre-Gaetz status, making it impossible for a lone unhinged member to threaten the speaker. And if the Republicans are really in a bind, how about pushing them to abandon their so-called Hastert rule, the counterproductive practice of their speakers not allowing a vote on any bill that lacks the support of “a majority of the majority”?

Would these be tough items for an aspiring speaker to deliver? Absolutely. Are they all long shots? Sure. Then again, until recently who would have thought that Democrats would link arms with Republican extremists to successfully depose a speaker? We are in uncharted territory here, people. Might as well take a few risks.

Of course, the Democrats may ultimately decide it’s not worth getting involved. This dumpster fire is, after all, a Republican problem. But specifically because of that, it may be too much to expect them to fix the situation on their own.

Michelle Cottle is a New York Times columnist.

It hasn’t been emphasized enough that Laphonza Butler, California’s newest U.S. senator, has no legislative experience.

This hole in her resume matters a great deal despite an erosion of public faith in legislative experience that is a bipartisan affliction in our politics. It was one of the factors that led to the election of President Donald Trump. In liberal, one-party California, the importance of legislative experience was disregarded by Gov. Gavin Newsom when he appointed the inexperienced Butler to fill the seat of the late Dianne Feinstein.

Sworn in on Tuesday, Butler has been celebrated widely for her race, her gender, her orientation and her sterling credentials of a certain kind. She has also been lauded within an echo chamber of Democrats, many of whom have been elected to public office even if Butler never has.

Lost in the aftermath of Butler’s appointment has been the kind of critical scrutiny that would normally accompany an important political appointment. Her appointment is problematic because the voting public of California has no idea where Butler stands on crucial issues because she’s never had to cast a vote on any level of government. What are her views on foreign policy? Despite staying too long in power, Feinstein was a titan in California and national politics and she’s being replaced by a legislative beginner.

Moreover, Butler has made curious choices and statements in the past that have not been examined as they would in an election campaign. She joined the Senate this week not long after writing a letter on behalf of a former Los Angeles City Councilman who was convicted in a federal bribery and fraud scheme. Mark Ridley-Thomas is facing 42 months in a federal prison. Butler’s letter on behalf of Ridley-Thomas earlier this year was a recitation of political favors and personal kindness that Ridley-Thomas bestowed on her. How he supported her efforts to secure a $15-an-hour minimum wage in California. How thoughtful he was to her partner after a cancer diagnosis.

Butler’s main ask in the letter was that authorities consider “the totality of who and what Mr. Ridley-Thomas has been, the work he has done and the leadership he showed so many of us in times of difficulty.”

It was the kind of letter that an advocate would write, which is what Butler has been in her career. An advocate for union members but also, curiously, for some companies hated by unions.

Butler has done consulting work for rideshare giant, Uber. Earlier this year, a state appeals court ruled that companies like Uber and Lyft can continue to treat their California drivers as independent contractors.

“The ruling mostly upholds a voter-approved law, called Proposition 22, that said drivers… are not entitled to benefits like paid sick leave and unemployment insurance,” wrote National Public Radio.

Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher, leader of the California Labor Federation and a former state assemblywoman, said this about the ruling: “Today the Appeals Court chose to stand with powerful corporations over working people, allowing companies to buy their way out of our state’s labor laws and undermine our state constitution.”

Butler chose to stand with Uber as well, her labor background notwithstanding.

She has declined to discuss the specifics of the work she did for Uber. And Gonzalez Fletcher has declined to comment on Butler’s appointment to the Senate. That the most high-profile labor leader in California won’t say anything about Butler beyond “congratulations” speaks volumes. It also hints at the political implications of Butler’s appointment that have been obscured by her personal story as a Black, gay woman joining the elite ranks of the U.S. Senate.

Upon naming Butler, Newsom said that he was placing no conditions on her appointment and that if she chose to run for a full term in 2024, it was up to her. Butler won’t answer the question of whether she will run in 2024, but it seems a safe bet that someone will do a poll gauging her chances.

If Butler decided she wanted to run for a full term, it’s inconceivable that Newsom would just stand by and let her lose. He would want his appointee to beat Adam Schiff, Katie Porter and Barbara Lee, members of the House of Representatives vying for the Senate seat now occupied by Butler.

So if Newsom is willing to do that, why wasn’t he willing to support Lee?

She’s a seasoned legislator, with a strong voice. She’s principled and battle-tested. By appointing Butler, Newsom was picking someone with a profile that suited his political aspirations.

If Newsom really wanted to pick a Black woman who has paid her dues and done the hard work of standing in front of voters to get elected, he would not have chosen Laphonza Butler.

But he did because Newsom is who he is. He rightly calculated that once he appointed Butler, the same critics angry with him for giving the impression that his appointment was a seat warmer would suddenly be happy.

Butler’s personal story silenced real skepticism about Newsom’s choice.

But there should be more scrutiny. Butler’s appointment is an outlier in California politics.

The last time someone this inexperienced was named to the Senate was in 1964 when then-Gov. Pat Brown tabbed Pierre Salinger to fill a seat vacated after the death of an incumbent, just as Butler replaced Feinstein.

Salinger had been press secretary to President John F. Kennedy before serving a brief stint in the Senate that ended after a few months when he was defeated by Republican George Murphy in November of 1964. Unlike Butler, Salinger was born and raised in California. He grew up, was educated and worked in San Francisco before working for JFK.

Butler is from Mississippi. For a decade, she was president of SEIU 2015 — the largest labor union in California representing more than 325,000 nursing home and home-care workers. Butler was an adviser to Kamala Harris during her disastrous run for president in the 2020 election, which ended before the California primary. She was appointed by Gov. Jerry Brown to serve on the UC Board of Regents and served three years before moving to Maryland to run EMILY’s List.

Much has been made of the fact that she had been living in Maryland for the last two years when Newsom appointed her to the Senate, but the truth is even more troubling. In her life, Butler has only passed through California in pursuit of her impressive career trajectory.

Despite the trappings of a barrier-breaking personal story, Butler is where she is today thanks to the patronage of California’s elite political class. She got a leg up into the U.S. Senate by political calculation, despite her lack of experience.

Californians need to know this should Butler decide to run for elective office for the first time in her life.

Marcos Bretón oversees The Sacramento Bee’s editorial board.  ©2023 The Sacramento Bee. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency.