Of India’s three principal Jewish communities, the Bene Israel—who historically lived in the northwestern part of the country—have the most obscure origins. It was not until 1964 that the Israeli Chief Rabbinate accepted their status as Jews. According to their own legends, they are descended from fourteen shipwrecked Jewish travelers who landed on the coast of the Arabian Sea in ancient times. A recent genetic study sheds new light on the question, as Michele Chabin writes:

Using the latest tools in population genetics, a team of American and Israeli researchers were able to determine that the Bene Israel have significant Jewish ancestry that likely originated from a group of Jews from the Middle East. . . .

“Broadly speaking they looked similar to the non-Jewish Indian populations,” said Yedael Waldman, [one of the study’s co-authors]. “But when we looked deeper, we saw that they are different from other Indian populations and were significantly similar to other Jewish populations.”

Based on their findings, Waldman and his colleagues believe the Bene Israel’s descendants arrived in India anywhere from 600 to 1,000 years ago. . . . The Jewish immigrants “probably married local women” when they moved to India.

If there is to be peace, Palestinians will have to unlearn the hatred of Israel they have imbibed during nearly two decades of Hamas rule. This will be a difficult task, but Cole Aronson argues, drawing on the experiences of World War II, that Israel has already gotten off to a strong start:

The population’s compliance can . . . be won by a new regime that satisfies its immediate material needs, even if that new regime is sponsored by a government until recently at war with the population’s former regime. Axis civilians were made needy through bombing. Peaceful compliance with the Allies became a good alternative to supporting violent resistance to the Allies.

Israel’s current campaign makes a moderate Gaza more likely, not less. Destroying Hamas not only deprives Islamists of the ability to rule—it proves the futility of armed resistance to Israel, a condition for peace. The destruction of buildings not only deprives Hamas of its hideouts. It also gives ordinary Palestinians strong reasons to shun groups planning to replicate Hamas’s behavior.