In her famous portrait of Adolf Eichmann, Hannah Arendt raised the question of how seeming ordinary, “banal” individuals could have come to perpetrate the most horrific of crimes, sometimes without ever pulling a trigger. Arendt turned out to have mismeasured Eichmann entirely, but such killers did exist, and the historian Daniel Lee has written a detailed portrait of one: a mid-level officer in the SS named Robert Griesinger. In his appreciative review of the book, Malcolm Forbes writes:

Lee asserts that Griesinger’s reasons for joining [the Nazi party and the SS] were not so much ideological as opportunistic. He was an ambitious lawyer who wanted to get ahead and climb the civil-service ladder. Membership of the SS and the Gestapo facilitated such career advancement. There were other perks. When Griesinger married Gisela Nottebohm (a woman his over-protective mother regarded as “the evil one”), their Stuttgart marital home was, like those of SS officers and Gestapo agents all over the country, filled with the furniture left behind by Jews forced to emigrate. This privilege was probably extended when Griesinger was transferred to the euphemistically titled Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia in 1943. The Griesingers’ grand three-story villa was located in an affluent suburb of Prague that had once been home to a significant Jewish population.

But with each successive stage of Griesinger’s life it becomes clear that he was more than just a small cog in a large machine. He might not have taken part in the more brutal aspects of the Gestapo’s work during his two and half years at its Stuttgart headquarters; nevertheless as a Schreibtischtäter, or desktop perpetrator, he facilitated clampdowns and arrests and knew exactly what went on in the torture cells beneath his workplace. He might not have joined the killing squads that roamed western Ukraine in the summer of 1941 systematically rounding up and liquidating Jews (some of them Lee’s ancestors), but as a soldier in the same Wehrmacht unit, he was in close proximity to them and no doubt knew their names. And he might not personally have worked Jews to death in the Protectorate; however, as an official at the Reich’s Ministry of Economics and Labor in Prague he was responsible for deploying Jewish forced labor throughout the Czech lands—if not to a mine or a brickyard, then to the camp-ghetto of Theresienstadt.

This important book shows us how Griesinger and tens of thousands of other seemingly insignificant administrators wielded more than enough power to shape lives and destroy them. As Lee rightly claims, “The famous fanatics and murderers could not have existed without the countless enablers who kept the government running, filed the paperwork, and lived side-by-side with potential victims of the regime in whom they instilled fear and the threat of violence.”

On Monday night, the IDF struck a group of Hamas operatives near the Nasser hospital in Khan Yunis, the main city in southern Gaza. The very fact of this attack was reassuring, as it suggested that the release of Edan Alexander didn’t come with restraints on Israeli military activity. Then, yesterday afternoon, Israeli jets carried out another, larger attack on Khan Yunis, hitting a site where it believed Mohammad Sinwar, the head of Hamas in Gaza, to be hiding. The IDF has not yet confirmed that he was present. There is some hope that the death of Sinwar—who replaced his older brother Yahya after he was killed last year—could have a debilitating effect on Hamas.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump is visiting the Persian Gulf, and it’s unclear how his diplomatic efforts there will affect Israel, its war with Hamas, and Iran. For its part, Jerusalem has committed to resume full-scale operations in Gaza after President Trump returns to the U.S. But, Gabi Simoni and Erez Winner explain, Israel does not have unlimited time to defeat Hamas:

Israel faces persistent security challenges across multiple fronts—Iran, the West Bank, Yemen, Syria, and Lebanon—all demanding significant military resources, especially during periods of escalation. . . . Failing to achieve a decisive victory not only prolongs the conflict but also drains national resources and threatens Israel’s ability to obtain its strategic goals.

Only a swift, forceful military campaign can achieve the war’s objectives: securing the hostages’ release, ensuring Israeli citizens’ safety, and preventing future kidnappings. Avoiding such action won’t just prolong the suffering of the hostages and deepen public uncertainty—it will also drain national resources and weaken Israel’s standing in the region and beyond.

We recommend launching an intense military operation in Gaza without delay, with clear, measurable objectives—crippling Hamas’s military and governance capabilities and securing the release of hostages. Such a campaign should combine military pressure with indirect negotiations, maximizing the chances of a successful outcome while minimizing risks.

Crucially, the operation must be closely coordinated with the United States and moderate Arab states to reduce international pressure and preserve the gains of regional alliances.