Growing up in Damascus in the 1980s, Ziad Khoury would sometimes see a mysterious European coming in and out of a well-guarded, upscale apartment:

We eventually learned that he was “Hitler’s man” and that he was “good, not bad,” having “killed the Jews during World War II.” One of our friends, trying to be funny, raised the Nazi salute at a distance and barked: “Heil Hitler.” The man didn’t see him and neither did the security-service personnel who were standing nearby. This came as a relief to me at the time, not because admiring Hitler in Syria was a crime. It wasn’t. But because we knew the secret identity of a man whom the regime was protecting.

The man’s name was Alois Brunner, and he had worked closely with Adolf Eichmann and served as the director of Drancy, the transit camp where French Jews were imprisoned before being sent to Auschwitz. After the war, Brunner eluded capture by the Allies, and slipped out of Germany in 1954 to embark on the next phase of his bloodstained career:

He first landed in Rome and from there made his way to Egypt, where he found himself the guest of then-president Gamal Abdel Nasser. The details of how he met the Egyptian leader remain unclear, but Nasser was looking for ways to get back at the West in light of an Israeli raid on Gaza in February 1955 that left 38 Egyptian soldiers dead. . . . Brunner ended up being hired by the Egyptian military regime, which had been in power since 1952, as a “consultant” at its security apparatus, working closely with its security chief, Salah Nasser. During the short-lived Syrian-Egyptian union (1958-1961), Brunner was sent to Damascus to train police dogs, a talent he had developed at Hitler’s prisons.

In exchange for protection, Brunner [remained in Syria to] train Syrian troops in interrogation methods, espionage, and torture.

It is impossible to know to what extent Brunner saw the legacy of his brutal tactics bear fruit. But there is little doubt that Syrian and Egyptian interrogators today—all too young to remember Brunner or even know who he was—apply some of the same methods against their own compatriots that the Nazis used against the Jews.

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.