Following World War II, Britain continued its pre-war policy of keeping Jews out of the Land of Israel, enforcing it more strictly than ever. Peter Martell writes:

Between August 1946 and February 1949, more than 52,000 Jews taken off 39 boats were detained in a dozen camps in Cyprus. . . . The British wanted the cramped camps to be a “deterrent” aimed at “breaking the power of the ‘Hebrew resistance movement’ in Palestine,” Yad Vashem said. More than 400 people died of sickness. It is a history that Arie Zeev Raskin, the chief rabbi of Cyprus—where, he says, several thousand Jews pray at the synagogue each year—wants to “teach to the next generation.”

When he discovered a farmer using one of the camps’ last remaining metal huts as a tractor shed, Raskin made it the centerpiece of the Jewish museum of Cyprus he is building in the port city of Larnaca. “The huts were boiling hot in summer, and freezing in winter,” Raskin said.

In the camps, some 80 percent were aged between thirteen and thirty-five, “among the more spirited and lively survivors of the Holocaust,” said Yad Vashem, which added that 2,200 babies were born in the camps.

Some Cypriots, also resentful of British rule, worked with Jewish militia forces [like the Haganah, which were involved in organizing clandestine aliyah]. Key among them was Prodromos Papavassiliou, who after fighting fascist forces in North Africa with Britain’s Cyprus Regiment was outraged at the camps. . . . Prodromos helped hundreds of Jews, hiding those who tunneled out in orange groves and caves, until he could organize boats to smuggle them away from coves near the now-popular tourist resort of Ayia Napa.

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.