Over the past four years, something remarkable has been happening in Judea and Samaria.

Since the current government took office at the end of 2022, it has approved the establishment or retroactive legalization of 104 Jewish communities there.

At the center of this transformation has been Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who also serves as a minister in the Defense Ministry. In 2023, he was given broad authority over civilian affairs in Judea and Samaria, including settlement planning, through the newly created Settlement Administration.

And he has used that authority to reshape settlement policy.

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Since early October, American and other Western health and biodefense officials have been concerned by reports on social media that a young Russian researcher at an anti-plague institute in Siberia had died of a highly contagious form of plague after accidentally breaking a vial of the deadly germs in her laboratory.

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Two massacres, two Islamic terror attacks, two world-historical events.

The anniversaries of Sept. 11, 2001 and Oct. 7, 2023 mark incidents that changed the course of history in both obvious and subtle ways. Among the results were the American war against Iraq and the Israeli war against Hamas in Gaza, respectively. Neither has been entirely successful, but both removed immediate threats while embedding other threats more deeply in Western society.

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Addressing Congress nine days after Sept. 11, President George W. Bush declared: "Our war on terror begins with al Qaeda, but it does not end there." He added: "It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated."

A dozen years later, President Barack Obama announced that what had become known as the Global War on Terror "like all wars, must end. That's what history advises."

History doesn't actually advise, though it can reveal patterns – and Mr. Obama drew the wrong one. Wars against an enemy driven by an ideology of conquest rarely end until that enemy is decisively defeated or abandons its demands.

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The Hamas attack on October 7, 2023, thrust Israel into wars on seven fronts. A new book by Yonah Jeremy Bob, of the Jerusalem Post, and Elliot Kaufman, of the Wall Street Journal, chronicles an eighth front: the battle inside Israel's war cabinet. In the War Room details the clashes between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Minister without Portfolio Benny Gantz, and Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant. We've heard about these conflicts in bits and pieces over the past three years, but until the release of this new book, they lacked a cohesive narrative.

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Russell L. Riley writes at the beginning of "Inside the George W. Bush White House," an oral history of the Bush 43 years, that Peter Baker, a reporter for the New York Times, "speculated that the press corps gets only about 20 percent of the full story within any given White House 'in real time.'" That sounds about right to this former Bush White House staffer—I rated most stories about events in which I participated to be about 80% wrong.

That's no knock on Mr. Baker. It's nearly impossible to get the full story on what's happening inside any White House, particularly one as leak-averse as Mr. Bush's.

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Pope Leo XIV began an official visit to Spain (June 6–12) by urging Spaniards to embrace multicultural coexistence with Islam and stop "fanning the flames of polarization" over mass migration from the Muslim world. He said that Christians and Muslims can live together as friends and proceeded to present medieval Spain—which was occupied by Islamic invaders for nearly 800 years—as an interfaith utopia that led to advancements in astronomy, medicine, and science.

The Pope declared:

"Your own history suggests that a culture of encounter, not confrontation, is what fosters stability and prosperity....

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A century ago, the first African American to earn a doctorate from Harvard and one of the founders of the NAACP, W.E.B. DuBois published The Gift of Black Folk, a book that was commissioned by the Catholic organization the Knights of Columbus, as part of a series intended to help Americans appreciate the contributions of minority groups.

DuBois was highly educated and an avid reader of great texts from Plato to Frederick Douglass. The irony of the present moment is that if DuBois were currently a student in a core philosophy class at Texas A&M University, he would be assigned only a redacted version of Plato's great work, The Republic.

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Imagine your physician walks into the exam room, recommends a prescription medication, and casually mentions she's being paid by the company that makes the drug to say so. You'd probably have questions.

You might even find a new doctor.

Now imagine that same scenario playing out on Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube — except the advice is coming from a celebrity "influencer" who's very familiar to you, who has an emotional backstory, and a financial arrangement buried somewhere in a sea of hashtags. Millions of people encounter exactly this situation every day, and most of them have no idea it's happening.

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ANYONE WHO spends time with me knows me knows how much I despise litter. For as long as I can remember, I have fumed at the sight of trash on sidewalks, beer cans in the gutter, or garbage flung from passing cars. I often pick up litter when I'm walking, and when my kids were young I made them pick it up, too.

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