On March 15, 1979, Habib Elghanian, an Iranian-Jewish philanthropist and entrepreneur, was arrested by the Islamist government that had just installed itself in Tehran. He had previously turned down many opportunities to leave: even after the government had forbidden him from exiting the country, the Israeli ambassador offered him a seat on one of the last El Al flights out, no ticket or passport necessary. He offered the seat to a family member. Two months after his arrest, the government announced that he had been shot, on charges including “friendship with the enemies of God” and “spying for the Zionistic state of Israel.”

Tara Bahrampour reviews a new biography of Elghanian, written by his granddaughter Shahrzad:

Elghanayan travels the world to talk with her grandfather’s friends, relatives, and business associates, and pores over books, news articles, letters, photos, videos, and journals. She learns that his birth and death were bookends to an extraordinary sweet spot of openness and opportunity for Jews in Iran. Jews had lived there since before the arrival of Islam and had survived centuries of discrimination. When Elghanian was born in 1912, about 50,000 lived in ghettos in Iranian cities. Just six years earlier, equal rights for minority groups were enshrined in a new Western-style constitution, paving the way for Jews to integrate into the broader social, economic, and political landscape.

The son of a poor tailor, Elghanian grew up in a neighborhood of narrow alleys beside an open garbage dump. But his family valued education, and he and his brothers attended a school that provided a modern trilingual education, and were taken under the wings of uncles building up small import-export businesses between Iran and Europe.

Before the revolution there would have been little reason for Elghanian to leave Iran: he was a highly respected community leader who had established charitable foundations, served on the Chamber of Commerce and as the head of the Central Jewish Board of Tehran, built some of the capital’s first high-rises, and helped forge connections between Iran and Israel.

Tamir Hayman analyzes the latest reports about an offer by Hamas to release three female soldiers in exchange for 150 captured terrorists, of whom 90 have received life sentences; then, if that exchange happens successfully, a second stage of the deal will begin.

If this does happen, Israel will release all the serious prisoners who had been sentenced to life and who are associated with Hamas, which will leave Israel without any bargaining chips for the second stage. In practice, Israel will release everyone who is important to Hamas without getting back all the hostages. In this situation, it’s evident that Israel will approach the second stage of the negotiations in the most unfavorable way possible. Hamas will achieve all its demands in the first stage, except for a commitment from Israel to end the war completely.

How does this relate to the fighting in Rafah? Hayman explains:

In the absence of an agreement or compromise by Hamas, it is detrimental for Israel to continue the static situation we were in. It is positive that new energy has entered the campaign. . . . The [capture of the] border of the Gaza Strip and the Rafah crossing are extremely important achievements, while the ongoing dismantling of the battalions is of secondary importance.

That being said, Hayman is critical of the approach to negotiations taken so far:

Gradual hostage trades don’t work. We must adopt a different concept of a single deal in which Israel offers a complete cessation of the war in exchange for all the hostages.