What I Got Wrong in 2024

The first thing I got wrong in 2024 was the war in Gaza, which I saw as a “forever war” with diminishing returns. After the first ceasefire and return of some 100 Israeli hostages one month into the war, I became obsessed with a repeat. I allowed my skepticism of Bibi’s intentions—the longer he would prolong the war, the longer he’d keep his coalition— to cloud my judgement about his claims of “total victory,” which I saw as self-serving hype.

It turns out continuing to smash Hamas was the right thing to do, regardless of motive. In that sense, as much as I keep praying for the release of the hostages, I’ve come closer to those who believe that the Oct. 7 Hamas invasion was so singularly shattering and threatening to Israel’s survival, it required an equally shattering statement to deter Israel’s enemies.

I also misread the threat from Hezbollah. I’ve been terrified over the years by reports of thousands of precision-guided Hezbollah missiles that could overwhelm Israeli defenses and shut down electrical grids and disable the country. Given that threat, I didn’t think Israel could fight two wars at once. I was wrong. The thousands of pagers that blew up on Sept. 17 to decimate Hezbollah leadership, and the follow-up campaign to destroy its weaponry and severely weaken its terror army, began a turnaround that will go down in Israeli military history.

Back home in the U.S., I was wrong about expecting violence in the aftermath of the elections. “The potent mix of fear and anger that has marked this election season has reached a peak on Election Day,” I wrote on Nov. 5. “It shouldn’t surprise us, then, if it feels as if a civic volcano is about to erupt.”

The only civic volcano that erupted was a Republican sweep of the popular vote, the Electoral College and both Houses of Congress.

I was wrong to get sucked in by a woke movement that terrorized dissenters with insults. I shouldn’t have waited until Nov. 7 to write, “Can We Stop Walking on Eggshells Now?” I myself walked on eggshells a little too often, because I didn’t want to be accused of being transphobic or racist or bigoted. My low point: When a friend from the left rebuked me for using the term “looting” when covering the 2020 riots– because it smacked of “racism”– I listened carefully and with empathy. That was lame. Treating people and causes with kid gloves rather than the truth never ends well.

I misjudged Donald Trump’s legal troubles in the year leading to the elections. I thought the slew of indictments, on the federal and local levels, would consume him and take him down one way or another. I figured that a more palatable candidate, like Nikki Haley or Ron DeSantis, would replace him at the top of the ticket.

The indictments had the opposite effect, boosting his fundraising and solidifying his status as a victim of a “Deep State” out to get him. As the indictments failed to debilitate him, and after an assassin’s bullet failed to kill him, a halo of “invincibility” followed him. Given how he hit rock bottom in the 2022 midterms, I didn’t see that monumental comeback coming.

I went too easy on the legacy media for not pursuing one of the biggest scandals in recent memory: President Joe Biden’s mental decline that was in evidence at the very beginning of his term, as confirmed recently in a Wall Street Journal expose. The political bias was not just shameful– it was journalistic malpractice.

Was I wrong about fighting antisemitism like “winners and not whiners”? I’ve written several columns in recent years questioning our obsession with “condemning” and “calling out” every little incident of Jew-hatred. I wondered if this really works. And I argued that we may be paying a silent price for this obsession, because it diminishes our brand, making Jews look weak and worried only about physical safety.

Am I right about this? I’m not sure. I know that Jew-haters need to know there are consequences to their actions, but beyond that, I can’t say one way or another. It’s a conversation.

Same with Israel activism on college campuses. Should we fight back with protests and talking points or with… Tel Aviv-style pop-up parties? “Let the cops make the arrests. Let the legal eagles and activists do their thing,” I wrote last June to Jewish college students. “You hit the streets and campuses and party. You do happiness. You show fun and love of life, not fear.”

Again, am I right? I can’t say, maybe partly, maybe on certain campuses. These opinions need to be tested on the ground.

I waited all year to write a column about my obsession with Youtube clips on food markets in the Third World and survival camping in Alaska, but never got around to it. That was a mistake. It was also a mistake not to write that column about whether AI will ever be able to write my columns.

One of the quirks of being a weekly columnist is that we’re very eager to write stuff you won’t read elsewhere. For many of us, “Thou shalt not bore” is our first commandment. So we try to write columns that will challenge the conventional wisdom and provoke thought.

Like, for example, a column on admitting some of the things we get wrong.