Born in 1874 (or thereabouts), Emma Messing grew up in Indianapolis, where her father was the rabbi of a prominent Reform synagogue and a highly regarded figure in Jewish and Gentile circles. Messing, whose doings were noted in the society pages from her youth onward, started performing vaudeville with her sister at age thirty-one, had a romance with the colorful non-Jewish real-estate developer who built Miami Beach, and pursued a brief career as an actress in New York. In 1921—having realized that she would not achieve Broadway stardom—she got herself a job with the State Department as an aide at the embassy in Berlin. Mark Lasswell writes:

With Germany’s invasion of Poland in September 1939, Messing was reassigned to the U.S. legation in Stockholm. As the war in Europe widened, she resigned her position and in December 1940, at age sixty-seven, she returned to America and set out to tell anyone who would listen about Hitler and the Nazi threat. . . .

At an Indianapolis auditorium in March 1941, an overflow crowd turned out to hear Messing’s speech about what she had seen in Germany. She gave the talk again a few nights later, at the World War Memorial Shrine, for those who couldn’t get in. A long article in the Indianapolis Star about the first night quoted extensively from the speech. Messing described Hitler’s rise in the 1920s, his demonization of Jews, his vilification of all religion so he could “substitute the worship of this anti-Christ, this pagan Hitler.” She noted that “he spoke the language of the masses. He spoke to the people who were ready to believe anything.”

She talked about the creeping terror of life in Germany after Hitler came to power, and about meeting concentration-camp prisoners who had miraculously gained release by promising to leave the country or through the intercession of an influential friend. The camps, she said, were “hell holes of mental and physical tortures, where hundreds of thousands have been incarcerated, not criminals, but men of the highest intellect and standing. These splendid men have been and are subjected to unheard of cruelties by the worst sadists of the modern world.”

Messing later wrote that a few days before the speech, “I was approached by several women who asked me not to ‘exaggerate the atrocities because the newspapers had been doing this right along.’ My answer was, if you multiply what you have been reading a hundred times you will still not have the whole truth.”

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.