Alma Mahler (1879 – 1964), herself a composer of no mean ability, spent her life pursuing relationships—both romantic and platonic—with talented men. Many of these men were Jews—including her first husband, the composer Gustav Mahler, and her third, the writer Franz Werfel, as well as several of her many lovers. The daughter of a Christian Viennese painter, Alma also held fiercely anti-Semitic attitudes, which receive attention in a biography by Oliver Hilmes, recently translated into English. Bee Wilson writes in her review:

Hilmes is the first of Alma’s biographers to treat her anti-Semitism and belief in her own godliness as driving forces in her life, rather than as a form of unthinking prejudice. . . . In the diaries that Hilmes has uncovered, Alma is far more unguarded in her frequent expressions of anti-Jewish sentiment. She calls [the writer Elias] Canetti a “half-crippled, nihilistic Jew” and writes warmly of a meeting with Hitler, when, under the influence of a bottle of champagne, she admired his “kindly, soft eyes.” As Hilmes sees it, Alma deliberately sought out relationships with talented but ugly Jewish men so that she could lord it over them. She would try to improve them, even sanctify them with her love, and when this failed she would feel contempt for them. When the initial glow of feeling for Werfel wore off, in 1924, she wrote that he “has shrunk back down to the short, ugly, fat Jew” that he was when they first met.

Her anti-Semitism was so deep-rooted that it applied even to her own children. She favored Manon, the “Aryan” child of [her second husband, the architect Walter] Gropius, over Anna, the surviving child from her marriage to Mahler.

Many women have aspired to “conquer” men. Some have sought to be muses, under the impression that enabling a man’s creative work is itself a form of genius. It takes a strange personality indeed . . . to see it as her mission to inspire powerful Jewish men to worship her in order that she could then liberate them from their Jewishness.

With the IDF engaged in ground maneuvers in both northern and southern Gaza, and a plan about to go into effect next week that would separate more than 100,000 civilians from Hamas’s control, an end to the war may at last be in sight. Yet there seems to be no agreement within Israel, or without, about what should become of the territory. Efraim Inbar assesses the various proposals, from Donald Trump’s plan to remove the population entirely, to the Israeli far-right’s desire to settle the Strip with Jews, to the internationally supported proposal to place Gaza under the control of the Palestinian Authority (PA)—and exposes the fatal flaws of each. He therefore tries to reframe the problem:

[M]any Arab states have failed to establish a monopoly on the use of force within their borders. Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, and Sudan all suffer from civil wars or armed militias that do not obey the central government.

Perhaps Israel needs to get used to the idea that in the absence of an entity willing to take Gaza under its wing, chaos will prevail there. This is less terrible than people may think. Chaos would allow Israel to establish buffer zones along the Gaza border without interference. Any entity controlling Gaza would oppose such measures and would resist necessary Israeli measures to reduce terrorism. Chaos may also encourage emigration.

Israel is doomed to live with bad neighbors for the foreseeable future. There is no way to ensure zero terrorism. Israel should avoid adopting a policy of containment and should constantly “mow the grass” to minimize the chances of a major threat emerging across the border. Periodic conflicts may be necessary. If the Jews want a state in their homeland, they need to internalize that Israel will have to live by the sword for many more years.