Anti-Christian atrocities, an Arab solution for Gaza and other commentary

Nearly a decade after the global buzz for the #BringBackOurGirls social-media campaign, moans Paul Coleman at Spiked, “kidnappings and sexual slavery are still widespread in Nigeria.” Boko Haram, Islamic State’s West Africa Province and other “marauding Islamists” terrorize the country, and the “violence shows no sign of stopping.” Their targets “tend to be Christians, girls seeking a ‘Western’ education or a combination of both.” By one estimate “over 8,000 Christians were murdered for their faith in 2023.” Yet the world dodges the Islamist nature of the threat: Denouncing a Christmas Eve massacre of Nigerian Christians, the European Parliament “named ‘climate change’ and ‘environmental degradation’ as root causes of the violence.” The West must end its “silence on Nigeria’s persecuted Christians”; its “refusal to condemn this Islamist violence smacks of pure cowardice.”

In search of a realistic plan for post-war Gaza, The New York Times’ Bret Stephens proposes “an Arab Mandate for Palestine,” aiming to transform the Strip “from a locus of conflict to a ‘zone of shared interests’ between Israel and friendly Arab states” — “a Mediterranean version of Dubai.” “The key lies in persuading moderate Arab states that they have the biggest stakes of all in achieving a better outcome for Gaza” than being an outpost of Iranian power that threatens security across the region. Arab states “have a measure of legitimacy with Gazans that non-Arab actors will never have and that Palestinians in Hamas and the Palestinian Authority have forsaken.” Israel’s right may well reject this vision, but ultimately, an Arab Mandate “helps Israel, hurts Iran, defangs Islamists and offers Palestinians a visible avenue toward peace, prosperity and independence.”

“Looking at that federal debt, here’s a question from a former budget director that no one wants to hear: When are taxes going up?” asks Mick Mulvaney at The Hill. “Voters say they want” Uncle Sam “to spend less (or at least some of them do), but the overwhelming majority of them vote to spend more,” mainly “because they haven’t been paying for the government they have been getting for most of the last 40 or 50 years.” “Make people pay, in full, for the government they are getting, and maybe then they will start demanding less government. Of course, there is another way: We could just spend less now.” Not getting spending under control will bring “serious inflation,” and “inflation is a tax in and of itself.”

“Former President Donald Trump’s pledge to slap a 100 percent tariff on Chinese vehicle imports aligns with a rise in anxiety in Washington” and with “both Democrats and Republicans clamoring for drastic steps to save American jobs,” reports Politico’s Tanya Snyder. Well before Trump’s “ ‘bloodbath’ tirade” on the issue, Democratic senators had “urged the Biden administration to consider increasing the United States’ tariffs on Chinese-made cars. Republican lawmakers have also called for trade penalties against vehicles from China.” Fact is, “the Chinese auto industry is poised to compete on quality — and win on price — in a way it never has before,” and Beijing “controls 85 percent of the processing of critical minerals needed for the manufacturing of electric vehicles worldwide.”

Democrats usually bank on “large Hispanic majorities,” yet “growing numbers” of Latinos and “other nonwhite working-class voters view Democrats as out of touch,” observes The Wall Street Journal’s Jason L. Riley. And recent Republican “inroads have smart Democrats terrified.” Donald Trump’s standing with Hispanics has grown since 2020, with some polls finding more than 40% support. As liberal analyst Ruy Teixeira explains, Dems’ cultural lurch left is one big problem. Plus, “the Trump years prior to the pandemic were actually relatively better for working-class voters, including nonwhites, than the first three years of the Biden administration.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board