For at least four centuries, the intellectual center of rabbinic Judaism was located in the Sasanian empire, a pre-Islamic Persian kingdom that included Mesopotamia, home to a vast Jewish population and its flourishing yeshivas. Yet despite the fact that these Jews produced the Babylonian Talmud, several other works, and numerous inscriptions, surprisingly little is known to scholars about how they related to the state that ruled over them. Jeffrey L. Rubenstein reviews a new work by Simcha Gross that attempts to shed light on the subject:

Previously, scholars viewed the Babylonian Jewish community as largely independent, autonomous, and tolerated in the empire. The ruling Sasanians and the local political institutions were seen as remote, operating in the background but not really influencing Jews, who lived at some degree of social and political remove from their neighbors and overlords. Gross rejects this in favor of “a more immanent and integrationist model of Sasanian rule, which Jews could not avoid, and within and against which they positioned and defined themselves.”

The older model of a remote and largely tolerant empire emerged in part due to the relatively few references to the Sasanian court in the Talmud and the fact that when talmudic sources portray the Persian kings, they paint favorable, sympathetic pictures of them.

Likewise, the absence of many reports about persecution, violence, and martyrdom suggested to earlier scholars that Babylonian Jewry was not oppressed. When friction did occur, it was assumed that this was the work of fanatical Zoroastrian priests rather than the fault of the Sasanian kings. Gross is skeptical of this irenic picture, and for good reason.

As this newsletter noted last week, Gaza is not suffering from famine, and the efforts to suggest that it is—which have been going on since at least the beginning of last year—are based on deliberate manipulation of the data. Nor, as Shany Mor explains, does international law require Israel to feed its enemies:

Article 23 of the Fourth Geneva Convention does oblige High Contracting Parties to allow for the free passage of medical and religious supplies along with “essential foodstuff, clothing, and tonics intended for children under fifteen” for the civilians of another High Contracting Party, as long as there is no serious reason for fearing that “the consignments may be diverted from their destination,” or “that a definite advantage may accrue to the military efforts or economy of the enemy” by the provision.

The Hamas regime in Gaza is, of course, not a High Contracting Party, and, more importantly, Israel has reason to fear both that aid provisions are diverted by Hamas and that a direct advantage is accrued to it by such diversions. Not only does Hamas take provisions for its own forces, but its authorities sell provisions donated by foreign bodies and use the money to finance its war. It’s notable that the first reports of Hamas’s financial difficulties emerged only in the past few weeks, once provisions were blocked.

Yet, since the war began, even European states considered friendly to Israel have repeatedly demanded that Israel “allow unhindered passage of humanitarian aid” and refrain from seizing territory or imposing “demographic change”—which means, in practice, that Gazan civilians can’t seek refuge abroad. These principles don’t merely constitute a separate system of international law that applies only to Israel, but prolong the suffering of the people they are ostensibly meant to protect:

By insisting that Hamas can’t lose any territory in the war it launched, the international community has invented a norm that never before existed and removed one of the few levers Israel has to pressure it to end the war and release the hostages.

These commitments have . . . made the plight of the hostages much worse and much longer. They made the war much longer than necessary and much deadlier for both sides. And they locked a large civilian population in a war zone where the de-facto governing authority was not only indifferent to civilian losses on its own side, but actually had much to gain by it.