A well-regarded literary critic, editor, and occasional writer of fiction, Pearl Kazin (1922–2011) rubbed elbows with a who’s who of the post-World War II American literary scene, including the novelists Truman Capote and Ralph Ellison and the poets Elizabeth Bishop (one of her closest friends), John Berryman, and Dylan Thomas (with whom she had a love affair). She was also the sister of the writer Alfred Kazin and the wife of the sociologist Daniel Bell, two of the most prominent of the group known as the New York intellectuals. Her son, David Bell, describes what he has discovered about Kazin’s life and literary career from her correspondence, and reflects on her relationship with her own origins:

In 1943 she won a fellowship to graduate school in English at Harvard. . . . The years at Harvard left other marks. Her strong Brooklyn accent, she told me once, when I was a teenager, seemed physically to repel the other students and faculty. So she took elocution lessons and lost it. When I asked her to say something in her old accent, she spoke a few sentences in the broadest Brooklyn I had ever heard. Without thinking, I gasped, “Oh my God,” and a look of horror and shame crossed her face.

When I was a boy, at home my father would sometimes lapse into Yiddish, the language both my parents had spoken before starting school, but my mother almost never did. She never openly expressed any shame about the immigrant world she came from, but the genteel and reserved way she spoke, dressed, and carried herself—perfect posture, no hand motions, skirts and sweaters in muted colors—made clear that she had left that world behind forever.

[Thomas] also described her as an important editor with an elite education and an “air of professional sophistication.” My mother certainly tried to present herself this way, but she was still a Jewish woman not so far removed from a poor immigrant background, and prey to enormous insecurities.

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.