Born in 1894, murdered by the Soviet political police in 1940, Isaac Babel is best known for Red Cavalry, his collection of stories about the Polish-Bolshevik war of 1919-1921. Another cycle, Odessa Stories, has recently appeared in a new English translation by Boris Dralyuk. Praising Dralyuk for the “rhythm and concision” of his “clipped, pacey style,” Robert Minto notes the stories’ political message:

The book is broken into parts which show Odessa in its romantic heyday, run by gangsters, and then in its Soviet decline, as it is ruthlessly standardized, normalized, and drained of color. Babel’s autobiographical notes and essays about Odessa are tacked onto the end, to make the book a complete testament to his vision of the city.

That vision is complex and tragic. Odessa in pre-Soviet days may have been a region of mythic heroes, who share something of the amoral vigor of the bandits and warriors of folklore, but it also hosted a plundered populace. A city run by bandits is a paradise for no one but the strong. Still, compared with the regime that pacified the city, old Odessa may not have been so bad after all. The Soviet government rooted out corruption and crime, but it also cracked down on religion and innocent customs, reorganizing here as everywhere according to the blunt dictates of un-nuanced rationality. . . .

Babel . . . resisted the cultural mandate that writers should conform to a politically useful socialist realism. His stories were resolutely romantic, and rather than revising his oeuvre or adopting a new documentary style, he opted to write less and less. He said that he was becoming the master of a new genre, the genre of silence.

The tragic course of Babel’s career exemplifies the cleavage opened by Soviet history between the deepest feelings and the profoundest convictions of its best and wisest supporters. To dream the dream of red plenty while witnessing its dystopic implementation and watching your own art suppressed must have been soul-destroying. I think the conflicted admiration Babel’s gangsters wring from the heart of a reader is an echo of Babel’s own life-defining conflict.

For some time, opponents of U.S support for Israel have been urging the White House to end the war in Gaza, or simply calling for a ceasefire. Douglas Feith and Lewis Libby consider what such a result would actually entail:

Ending the war immediately would allow Hamas to survive and retain military and governing power. Leaving it in the area containing the Sinai-Gaza smuggling routes would ensure that Hamas can rearm. This is why Hamas leaders now plead for a ceasefire. A ceasefire will provide some relief for Gazans today, but a prolonged ceasefire will preserve Hamas’s bloody oppression of Gaza and make future wars with Israel inevitable.

For most Gazans, even when there is no hot war, Hamas’s dictatorship is a nightmarish tyranny. Hamas rule features the torture and murder of regime opponents, official corruption, extremist indoctrination of children, and misery for the population in general. Hamas diverts foreign aid and other resources from proper uses; instead of improving life for the mass of the people, it uses the funds to fight against Palestinians and Israelis.

Moreover, a Hamas-affiliated website warned Gazans last month against cooperating with Israel in securing and delivering the truckloads of aid flowing into the Strip. It promised to deal with those who do with “an iron fist.” In other words, if Hamas remains in power, it will begin torturing, imprisoning, or murdering those it deems collaborators the moment the war ends. Thereafter, Hamas will begin planning its next attack on Israel:

Hamas’s goals are to overshadow the Palestinian Authority, win control of the West Bank, and establish Hamas leadership over the Palestinian revolution. Hamas’s ultimate aim is to spark a regional war to obliterate Israel and, as Hamas leaders steadfastly maintain, fulfill a Quranic vision of killing all Jews.

Hamas planned for corpses of Palestinian babies and mothers to serve as the mainspring of its October 7 war plan. Hamas calculated it could survive a war against a superior Israeli force and energize enemies of Israel around the world. The key to both aims was arranging for grievous Palestinian civilian losses. . . . That element of Hamas’s war plan is working impressively.