In 1927, the young German scholar Ernst Kantorowicz published his groundbreaking biography of Emperor Frederick the Great, who ruled Germany and Sicily in the 13th century. The book, which combined immense erudition with nationalist enthusiasm, earned its author a full professorship at the University of Heidelberg at an unprecedented early stage in his career; Hermann Goering sent an inscribed copy to Mussolini and Hitler told one of his generals that he had read it twice. Kantorowicz himself was involved in right-wing circles from World War I until the Nazis came to power, then left Germany for the United States in 1939 and spent the rest of his career as a professor at Berkeley and Princeton, where he wrote a highly influential study of medieval political thought. Reviewing a recent biography of Kantorowicz by Robert Lerner, Robert E. Norton tells part of this fascinating figure’s story:

In many ways . . . Ernst Hartwig Kantorowicz was representative of the assimilated Jewish haute bourgeoisie in Wilhelmine Germany. Born in 1895 into a family of considerable wealth (his father owned a thriving liqueur firm) in Posen in West Prussia (now Poznań in Poland), Kantorowicz instinctively, even proudly, saw himself as an unhyphenated German. Later in life he would say he was of “Jewish descent, not Jewish belief.” His family celebrated Christmas and Easter, and only scattered Yiddish words were ever spoken at home. As a youth he attended the exclusive Royal Auguste-Viktoria Gymnasium, where he learned Greek, Latin, and French. Along with the values of the Prussian [educated middle class], he also imbibed a kind of reflexive patriotism and nationalist pride that was frequently stronger among Jews than among their Gentile compatriots. . . .

[In the late 1950s], several publishers . . . pleaded with Kantorowicz to allow another reprinting of his biography of Frederick II. Without explaining why, he steadfastly refused, at one point saying only: “the man who wrote that book died many years ago.” It was probably another death that stiffened his resistance to resuscitating the portentous emperor.

Kantorowicz had left most of his family behind in Germany when he made his escape in 1938, including his cousin Gertrud Kantorowicz and his mother, Clara. In 1942, aged sixty-five and eighty respectively, they had managed to reach the Swiss border, where they were caught, transported back to Germany, and shuttled among a succession of camps. In February 1943, Kantorowicz’s mother died in Theres¬ienstadt. There is no record of his ever commenting on his mother’s death, but a friend in Princeton reported him as having once said, “as far as Germany is concerned they can put a tent over the entire country and turn on the gas.”

As this newsletter noted last week, Gaza is not suffering from famine, and the efforts to suggest that it is—which have been going on since at least the beginning of last year—are based on deliberate manipulation of the data. Nor, as Shany Mor explains, does international law require Israel to feed its enemies:

Article 23 of the Fourth Geneva Convention does oblige High Contracting Parties to allow for the free passage of medical and religious supplies along with “essential foodstuff, clothing, and tonics intended for children under fifteen” for the civilians of another High Contracting Party, as long as there is no serious reason for fearing that “the consignments may be diverted from their destination,” or “that a definite advantage may accrue to the military efforts or economy of the enemy” by the provision.

The Hamas regime in Gaza is, of course, not a High Contracting Party, and, more importantly, Israel has reason to fear both that aid provisions are diverted by Hamas and that a direct advantage is accrued to it by such diversions. Not only does Hamas take provisions for its own forces, but its authorities sell provisions donated by foreign bodies and use the money to finance its war. It’s notable that the first reports of Hamas’s financial difficulties emerged only in the past few weeks, once provisions were blocked.

Yet, since the war began, even European states considered friendly to Israel have repeatedly demanded that Israel “allow unhindered passage of humanitarian aid” and refrain from seizing territory or imposing “demographic change”—which means, in practice, that Gazan civilians can’t seek refuge abroad. These principles don’t merely constitute a separate system of international law that applies only to Israel, but prolong the suffering of the people they are ostensibly meant to protect:

By insisting that Hamas can’t lose any territory in the war it launched, the international community has invented a norm that never before existed and removed one of the few levers Israel has to pressure it to end the war and release the hostages.

These commitments have . . . made the plight of the hostages much worse and much longer. They made the war much longer than necessary and much deadlier for both sides. And they locked a large civilian population in a war zone where the de-facto governing authority was not only indifferent to civilian losses on its own side, but actually had much to gain by it.