As the remaining survivors of the Shoah dwindle in number, the era of the Holocaust memoir has largely come to an end. But the 21st century has seen the rise of a new genre, in which the author tells the tale of his or her search for information about the experience of parents or grandparents during World War II, and perhaps learns something profound along the way. A fictionalized version of such a work—Everything Is Illuminated—launched the literary career of Jonathan Safran Foer, and was later turned into a movie. Now his mother, Esther Safran Foer, has written a nonfiction work about the same story, I Want You to Know We’re Still Here: A Post-Holocaust Memoir. The book, in Steven J. Zipperstein’s estimation, conveys something profound not about the Shoah, but about the American Jewish experience:

Whatever joy she has felt over the course of her life “is tempered,” Foer writes, “by shadows of the past.” One doesn’t doubt it. But, then again, this memoir-cum-genealogy is chock-full of indefatigably American nachas. . . . Amid all this joy, the shadows that haunt this memoir feel insubstantial, immeasurably less pertinent than the daily life that Esther Safran Foer so clearly relishes. Just beneath the surface of this Holocaust memoir is, in fact, an altogether different tale: a paean to the good life in America.

[I]t seems what most “haunts” [Foer]—a term repeatedly used—is not the Jewish past so much as the unsettling reality that this past intrudes so little on an ever-vital present. It is its absence that most disturbs—the simple fact that, although she was born in a European displaced-persons camp to a family of survivors, the past doesn’t bear down very heavily on Foer’s everyday life.

This speaks to one of the more oddly perplexing aspects of the American Jewish experience: its disjuncture from that long and winding road viewed overwhelmingly by Jews, whether wholly justified or not, in the darkest hues. With the exception of intermittent spikes in anti-Semitic sentiment in the interwar years and the recent increase in attacks on Jews—from street violence to far-right terrorist attacks—what is one to do with an American Jewish story that is, by and large, so disarmingly benign that even its darkest moments have rarely been all that dark?

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.