Reviewing an ongoing exhibit of the paintings of Max Oppenheimer at the Leopold Museum in Vienna, Liam Hoare writes:

The nature of [Oppenheimer’s] life, which took him to Berlin, Prague, Geneva, and Zurich in search of work and forced him into exile in New York after the Nazi annexation of Austria in March 1938, led to his collection being scattered across continents. Because he was a Jewish artist and a modernist, his work was also branded “degenerate” by Nazi authorities, confiscated, and destroyed.

Born July 1, 1885 into an assimilated, middle-class Jewish family, the son of a journalist and music critic, Oppenheimer enrolled at Vienna’s Academy of Fine Arts in 1900 before continuing his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, where he came under the influence of the liberal experimentalist Franz Thiele.

Oppenheimer’s early work from around 1910 was dedicated to portraiture. His representations of his subjects, most prominently the German writer Heinrich Mann, are like apparitions. They are lit with a kind of ethereal glow that seems to emanate from the subjects themselves. The lines of their suit jackets wiggle and wave, while their facial expressions and posture radiate ennui, a mood accentuated by the portraits’ dark backdrops. There is a deep seriousness, in particular artistic seriousness, to Oppenheimer’s portrait work.

Two of the most important questions about the recent agreement with Hamas are “Why now?” and “What is the relationship between the deal and the military campaign?” To Ron Ben-Yishai, the answer to the two questions is related, and flies in the face of the widespread (and incorrect) claim that the same agreement could have been reached in May:

Contrary to certain public perceptions, the military pressure exerted on northern Gaza in recent months was the main leverage that led to flexibility on the part of Hamas and made clear to the terror group that it would do well to agree to a deal now, before thousands more of its fighters are killed, and before the IDF advances further and destroys Gaza entirely.

Andrew Fox, meanwhile, presents a more comprehensive strategic analysis of the cease-fire:

Tactically, Hamas has taken a severe beating in Gaza since October 2023. It is assessed that it has lost as much as 90 percent of military capability and 80 percent of manpower, although it has recruited well and boosted its numbers from below 10,000 to the 20–30,000 range. However, these are untrained recruits, often under-age, and the IDF has been striking their training camps in northern Gaza so they have been unable to form any kind of meaningful capability. This is not a fighting force that retains any ability to harm the IDF in real numbers, although, as seen this past week with a fatal IED attack, they are able to score the odd hit.

However, this has not affected Hamas’s ability to retain administrative control of Gaza.

Internationally, Hamas sits alone in glory on the information battlefield. It has won the most resounding victory imaginable in the world’s media, in Western states, and on the Internet. . . . The stock of the Palestinian cause rides high internationally and will only get higher as Hamas proclaims a victory following this cease-fire deal. By means of political pressure on Israel, the international information campaign has kept Hamas in the fight, extended the war, prolonged the suffering of Gazan civilians, and has ultimately handed Hamas a win through the fact of their continued survival and eventual rebuild.

Indeed, writes Fox in a separate post, the “images coming out of Gaza over the last few days show us that too many in the wider world have been played for fools.”

Hamas fighters have been seen emerging from hospitals and the humanitarian zone. Well-fed Palestinians, with fresh haircuts and Adidas tracksuits, or in just vests, cheer for the camera. . . . There was no starvation. There was no freezing. There was no genocide.