Among Theodor Herzl’s friends was the Jewish writer Stefan Zweig, who like Herzl was a product of the cosmopolitan culture of the Hapsburg empire, but did not share in his Zionism. Zweig was a highly successful author of short fiction, essays, and biography in his own day, but he is best remembered now for The World of Yesterday, a memoir which depicts that cosmopolitan culture at its height. John P. Rossi reflects on the book and its author:

World War I ended that golden age for Zweig. It destroyed the Austrian empire and left his beloved Vienna a backwater city. The war and its vast destruction of human life depressed him. Despite a brief return to prosperity in the 1920s, he grew pessimistic about the future, especially as he saw the slow emergence of a new vicious form of hatred of the Jews, not the anti-Semitism of Vienna’s pre-war mayor, Karl Lueger, the Vienna where Lueger said “I determine who is a Jew” and Jews flourished. Something else was afoot.

Zweig’s belief in the power of culture was tested by the war, and he found himself out of sympathy with much of post-war culture, which turned its back on tradition. He described the new culture as a “mixture of impatience and fanaticism.”

The book’s subtitle is “Memoirs of a European,” and I’m reminded of the comment that, before World War I, there were many people who were Europeans. After the war, there were only Germans and Frenchmen and Czechs; the only Europeans were Jews.

Below, today’s newsletter will return to some other reflections on the one-year anniversary of the outbreak of the current war, but first something must be said of its recent progress. Israel has kept up its aerial and ground assault on Hizballah, and may have already killed the successor to Hassan Nasrallah, the longtime leader it eliminated less than two weeks ago. Matthew Levitt assesses the current state of the Lebanon-based terrorist group, which, in his view, is now “a shadow of its former self.” Indeed, he adds,

it is no exaggeration to say that the Hizballah of two weeks ago no longer exists. And since Hizballah was the backbone of Iran’s network of militant proxies, its so-called axis of resistance, Iran’s strategy of arming and deploying proxy groups throughout the region is suddenly at risk as well.

Hizballah’s attacks put increasing pressure on Israel, as intended, only that pressure did not lead Israelis to stop targeting Hamas so much as it chipped away at Israel’s fears about the cost of military action to address the military threats posed by Hizballah.

At the same time, Levitt explains, Hizballah still poses a serious threat, as it demonstrated last night when its missiles struck Haifa and Tiberias, injuring at least two people:

Hizballah still maintains an arsenal of rockets and a cadre of several thousand fighters. It will continue to pose potent military threats for Israel, Lebanon, and the wider region.

How will the group seek to avenge Nasrallah’s death amid these military setbacks? Hizballah is likely to resort to acts of international terrorism, which are overseen by one of the few elements of the group that has not yet lost key leaders.

But the true measure of whether the group will be able to reconstitute itself, even over many years, is whether Iran can restock Hizballah’s sophisticated arsenal. Tehran’s network of proxy groups—from Hizballah to Hamas to the Houthis—is only as dangerous as it is today because of Iran’s provision of weapons and money. Whatever Hizballah does next, Western governments must prioritize cutting off Tehran’s ability to arm and fund its proxies.