Based on a short story by a German writer, the film Persian Lessons is a joint German-Russian-Belarusian production released in 2020 that has now made its way to American theaters. Mario Naves finds it “an ingenious picture” whose story nonetheless “doesn’t altogether suit the gravity of its context.”

[The movie’s] main storyline is deftly introduced, tensely elaborated upon, and brought to an almost Zen-like resolution. Still, this solid movie is, in the end, oddly unsatisfying, being a showpiece whose bravura denudes it of moral currency.

The film begins with Nazis rounding up Jews in occupied France circa 1942. A wiry young man named Gilles (the Argentinian actor Nahuel Pérez Biscayart) is among those herded onto the back of a truck for a destination unknown but a fate guessed at by all. The man huddled next to Gilles offers a valuable book as barter for the sandwich Gilles has squirreled away in the pocket of his overcoat. The inside of the book is inscribed in Farsi. This chance encounter provides the seed of an idea by which Gilles hopes to evade certain death.

He does so by claiming that he is not Jewish but, in fact, Persian. The guards responsible for the execution of their prisoners, hearing this news, hold their guns. The commanding officer, Klaus Koch (Lars Eidinger), is on the lookout for a Persian. A peculiar request, you might think, and you wouldn’t be wrong. Koch is a former chef who dreams of opening a restaurant in Tehran upon the Third Reich achieving world dominion, . . . and he wants Gilles to teach him the language. Whereupon Gilles and Koch play an extended game of cat-and-mouse. Gilles, the rabbi’s son who doesn’t know a lick of Farsi, begins inventing words to teach his keeper.

Persian Lessons is no mean entertainment—it is, in fact, quite gripping—but one’s disbelief is tested more than is ideal for a movie that takes on quite as much as this one.

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.