To appreciate the new exhibit opening this Sunday at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles, titled “Hollywoodland: Jewish Founders and the Making of a Movie Capital,” one must know something about its backstory. Jacob Gurvis writes:

The exhibit’s debut comes two-and-a-half years after the museum’s opening, which sparked controversy among supporters and visitors for not including the industry’s Jewish beginnings.

[One segment of the exhibit], titled “Studio Origins,” is a long series of panels detailing the history of Hollywood’s studio system, spotlighting the eight studios known as “the majors” and their Jewish founders. In addition to archival documents, images of early studio lots, movie posters, and behind-the scenes images from film sets, the displays mention each founder’s Jewish background.

The Warner Bros. display highlights Harry and Jack Warner’s “early stance against Nazism when polls and public discourse still conveyed this was an unpopular position in the United States.” In the Universal installment, there is a 1938 letter written by the studio founder Carl Laemmle, in which he emphasizes his concern for European Jewry. Laemmle would help hundreds flee Nazi Germany.

Examining the effects of Iran’s decision to launch nearly 200 ballistic missiles at Israel on October 1, Benny Morris takes stock of the Jewish state’s strategic situation:

The massive Iranian attack has turned what began as a local war in and around the Gaza Strip and then expanded into a Hamas–Hizballah–Houthi–Israeli war [into] a regional war with wide and possibly calamitous international repercussions.

Before the Iranians launched their attack, Washington warned Tehran to desist (“don’t,” in President Biden’s phrase), and Israel itself had reportedly cautioned the Iranians secretly that such an attack would trigger a devastating Israeli counterstrike. But a much-humiliated Iran went ahead, nonetheless.

For Israel, the way forward seems to lie in an expansion of the war—in the north or south or both—until the country attains some sort of victory, or a diplomatic settlement is reached. A “victory” would mean forcing Hizballah to cease fire in exchange, say, for a cessation of the IDF bombing campaign and withdrawal to the international border, or forcing Iran, after suffering real pain from IDF attacks, to cease its attacks and rein in its proxies: Hizballah, Hamas, and the Houthis.

At the same time, writes Morris, a victory along such lines would still have its limits:

An IDF withdrawal from southern Lebanon and a cessation of Israeli air-force bombing would result in Hizballah’s resurgence and its re-investment of southern Lebanon down to the border. Neither the Americans nor the French nor the UN nor the Lebanese army—many of whose troops are Shiites who support Hizballah—would fight them.