Born in Romania in 1907, Iosif Mendel Hechter wrote novels, newspaper articles, and plays under the decidedly less Jewish-sounding name Mihail Sebastian. His autobiographical novel For Two-Thousand Years, published in 1934 and only recently translated into English, tells the story of Iosef, a student at Bucharest University, where it is difficult for a Jew to make it through a lecture without being slapped or punched by fellow students. Dara Horn writes in her review:

The term “self-hating Jew” has by now lost nearly all of its descriptive value, and when one reads For Two-Thousand Years, one sees why. Despite our own era’s ample ranks of, say, Jews who cheer for anti-Semitic murderers, the psychology of someone like Sebastian or his narrator is so far beyond anything seen in our lifetimes that For Two-Thousand Years, warts and all, is eminently worth reading. As a novel, it’s flawed to the point of near-failure, with a rambling structure, an utterly irrelevant middle section, and basically no plot. But as a psychological case study, it’s an absolute shocker that will linger in your mind for years to come. It’s also beautifully observed and brimming with insight, not a word of which feels even slightly contrived. . . .

What animates the book . . . is how Iosef almost unconsciously translates [the constant physical and verbal] attacks, and the many humiliations that continue into his adult life, into self-flagellation. “I will never be sufficiently tough with myself,” he berates himself after another beating, “will never strike myself hard enough.” Yes, you read that correctly. . . . If the self-loathing here weren’t clear enough, Iosef later becomes blunter still: “I’d like to hate myself, without excuses or forgiveness. I’d like to be an anti-Semite for five minutes.”

At no point in his endless ruminations does Iosef question his internalized critiques of himself as weak-willed, impure, overly emotional or, paradoxically, overly rational. The fact that his self-image is formed from caricatures straight out of a 2,000-year-old anti-Semitic playbook is acknowledged only in the book’s title—which is, in fact, the point. Iosef is a victim of anti-Semitism less because of how anti-Semites have injured his body than because of how they have scarred his soul. They have told him what Jews are, and he believes them.

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.