On June 1, 1941, a bloody anti-Jewish riot—known to Iraqi Jews as the Farhud—broke out in Baghdad, leaving 179 dead in its wake. Lyn Julius describes the event’s significance:

The Farhud (meaning “violent dispossession”) marked an irrevocable break between Jews and Arabs in Iraq and paved the way for the dissolution of the 2,600-year-old Jewish community barely ten years later. Loyal and productive citizens comprising a fifth of [the population] of Baghdad, the Jews had not known anything like the Farhud in living memory. Before the victims’ blood was dry, army and police warned the Jews not to testify against the murderers and looters. Even the official report on the massacre was not published until 1958.

Despite their deep roots, the Jews understood that they, along with other minorities, would never be an integral part of an independent Iraq. Fear of a second Farhud was a major reason why 90 percent of Iraq’s Jewish community fled to Israel after 1948.

But the Farhud was not just another anti-Jewish pogrom. The Nazi supporters who planned it had a more sinister objective: the round-up, deportation, and extermination in desert camps of the Baghdadi Jews. The inspiration behind the short-lived pro-Nazi government [then in power], led by Rashid Ali al-Gaylani in May 1941, and the Farhud itself, came not from Baghdad but from . . . the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, who had sought refuge in Iraq in 1939 with 400 Palestinian émigrés. Together, they whipped up local anti-Jewish feeling.

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.