From the American founding into the 20th century, the Catskill mountains have represented an alternative to the rapid industrialization and urbanization of New York City and its environs. An engaging, if sometimes confused, new book recounts the history of the mountain range and its multiple transformations. Jay Weiser writes in his review:

By the 1910s, the railroads, eager to attract traffic, offered fares to suit the pocketbooks of members of the massive East European Jewish immigration. Unlike [Washington] Irving, [James Fenimore] Cooper, and the Hudson River painters, [who romanticized the region in their works], the Jewish immigrants lacked nostalgia for a past that their forebears were not part of. Nor, coming from industrial New York City and its giant garment industry, did they share the upscale 19th-century quest for the unspoiled sublime. And so the previously remote (and therefore less expensive) southern Catskills became the scenic-yet-raucous Borscht Belt, with a range of accommodations from humble bungalow colonies to the 1,200-room Concord Hotel, where ladies were expected to change their finery three times a day.

The Borscht Belt also served as a training ground for entertainers: Milton Berle, Buddy Hackett, and Joan Rivers strutted their stuff at the Concord’s Imperial Room. . . . The Borscht Belt resorts’ colorful family owners (and colorful gangsters) and their increasingly lavish facilities (often designed by the pop-modernist master architect Morris Lapidus, best known for his Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami Beach) make for the most vivid episodes here.

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.