Born to a ḥasidic family in Austrian-ruled Poland, Isaac Deutscher (1907-1967) forsook the life of a talmudic prodigy to become a Marxist historian, writing the definitive biography of his hero, Leon Trotsky. In his essay “The Non-Jewish Jew”—recently republished together with his other writings on Jewish themes—Deutscher argues that the best products of the Jewish tradition are those who abandoned it, notably including Benedict Spinoza, Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, and Leon Trotsky. Adam Kirsch writes in his review:

The freethinkers and revolutionaries [Deutscher] cites experienced Judaism as a prison or a ghetto, because they wanted to belong to another, more capacious community—the community of mankind. What they did not recognize, and Deutscher doesn’t recognize, is that Jews already belong to that community, even if they are not heretics [from Judaism]. There is no such thing as a human being who is immediately universal. Home, as T.S. Eliot wrote, is where we start from, and Judaism is at least as good a place to start as any other. What really unites the great figures in Deutscher’s canon is that they believe that there was something disqualifying about Judaism as a habitation of the universal. . . .

But the real problem with the ideal of the “non-Jewish Jew” is that it is not, as it claims to be, an idea that transcends religion in the name of humanity. It is, rather, a restatement in secular terms of one of the most profound dynamics in European culture. This is the movement from letter to spirit, from law to love, from particular to universal, that is at the heart of the self-understanding of Christianity. Deutscher carefully avoids this comparison by choosing Aḥer [the 2nd-century-CE talmudic sage-turned-heretic], rather than Jesus, as his preferred Jewish heretic. But whenever a Jew tells other Jews that they are merely concerned about themselves, while he cares about the redemption of all mankind, he is, whether he admits it or not, recapitulating the original anti-Jewish movement of Christian civilization. . . .

In [his essay] “Who Is a Jew?” Deutscher writes, “it is strange and bitter to think that the extermination of six-million Jews should have given a new lease on life to Jewry. I would have preferred the six-million men, women, and children to survive and Jewry to perish.” Jewry—that is, Jewishness—deserves to perish, Deutscher believes, just because Marx was right, and Judaism is just another name for capitalism. Thus his Marxist millennium would mirror the Nazi millennium: both would be Judenrein. The apparent inability of Western thought to imagine an ideal society that is not predicated on the elimination of Judaism is the great and perpetual danger for Jews who live in that society. We [Jews] don’t escape that danger by clamoring for our own elimination.

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.