During the Russian civil war (1917-1922), various parties to the conflict carried out horrifying pogroms against Jewish civilians in Ukraine and Belarus, leaving tens, if not hundreds, of thousands dead and countless others maimed or raped. Jeffrey Veidlinger, Elissa Bemporad, Efim Melamed, and Eric Weitz discuss this bloody episode, its impact on Soviet Jewish history, and its relationship with the Holocaust. (Video, two hours; includes some contemporary footage of the aftermath of pogroms, beginning at 1:07:34.)

What do Hamas’s leaders hope to achieve in the current war? First of all, writes Matthew Levitt, survival. Second, they want the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority (PA) to return to power in the Gaza Strip, which happens to accord with one of the commonly floated plans for the day after the current war. Hamas, to this end, has engaged in reconciliation talks with its arch-rival, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which currently controls the PA. Levitt explains:

In seeking to force a new governance structure on Gaza and to refashion the PLO in its own image, Hamas hopes to impose a Hizballah model on the territory. Like Hizballah, the heavily armed, Iranian-backed Shiite militant movement in Lebanon, Hamas wants a future in which it is both a part of, and apart from, whatever Palestinian governance structure next emerges in Gaza. That way, as with Hizballah in Lebanon, it hopes to wield political and military dominance in Gaza and ultimately the West Bank without bearing any of the accountability that comes from ruling alone.

Why risk giving up control in Gaza, which it ruled since 2007? Because

the movement’s support in Gaza appeared to be eroding. Israel’s pre-October 7 strategy toward Hamas was based on buying calm by allowing Qatari funds to flow into Gaza in the hopes that this would decrease support for Hamas militancy among the Gazan population. For all the criticism Israel has faced for this approach in the months since Hamas’s attack, there is some indication that it was working.

Hamas also feared Israeli normalization with Saudi Arabia. The Saudis were demanding that Israel take tangible and irreversible steps toward a two-state solution and that Washington enter into a formal security treaty with Riyadh; in exchange, the Saudis would formally recognize Israel. Most Palestinians likely saw progress on Palestinian statehood as a good thing, but not Hamas, which has always been dead set against a two-state solution and committed to Israel’s destruction.

So as Hamas sees it, . . . it must adopt a Hizballah model in its relation to the postwar governance structure that emerges—joining with the PLO and changing the Palestinian movement from within while maintaining Hamas as an independent fighting force. For Hamas, this would be a return to first principles: it could pursue its fundamental commitment to destroying Israel and replacing it with an Islamist Palestinian state in all of what it considers historic Palestine.