The mid-20th century was one of the golden ages of Jewish academic scholarship, and one of its outstanding figures was Yehezkel Kaufmann (1889–1963), an original historian of ancient Judaism whose works are still the subject of debate today. Aly Elrefaei writes:

Born in Ukraine, [Kaufmann] was educated at a modern yeshiva in Odessa, studied at the Academy of Oriental Studies in St. Petersburg, and, in 1918, earned his doctorate in Kantian philosophy at Berne University in Switzerland; he studied there alongside the great intellectual Walter Benjamin. He moved to Berlin in 1920 and then immigrated to Palestine in 1928.

Kaufmann disputed the theory, prevalent in his time, that Israelite religion in the Second Temple period represented a decline from an original religion of the people to a religion of law. . . . Kaufmann’s ultimate goal was to prove the authenticity of Pentateuchal literature as a source for history . . . in a manner that scholars had denied.

Kaufmann presented a paradigm where Israelite religion arose independently as a new idea from the collective folk spirit of the people. . . . He argued that both idealism and materialism failed to explain the origin of Israel’s cultural creativity. Rather, it was Israel’s intuitive notion of a supreme God, i.e. monotheism, which arose with Moses [and] permeated Israelite culture.

Kaufmann also devoted much attention to the mystery of Jewish survival in the Diaspora, arguing that “the endurance of Jewish national consciousness in exile could be attributed solely to Judaism, rather than external factors such as Gentile animosity or an objectified national will to survive.”

If there is to be peace, Palestinians will have to unlearn the hatred of Israel they have imbibed during nearly two decades of Hamas rule. This will be a difficult task, but Cole Aronson argues, drawing on the experiences of World War II, that Israel has already gotten off to a strong start:

The population’s compliance can . . . be won by a new regime that satisfies its immediate material needs, even if that new regime is sponsored by a government until recently at war with the population’s former regime. Axis civilians were made needy through bombing. Peaceful compliance with the Allies became a good alternative to supporting violent resistance to the Allies.

Israel’s current campaign makes a moderate Gaza more likely, not less. Destroying Hamas not only deprives Islamists of the ability to rule—it proves the futility of armed resistance to Israel, a condition for peace. The destruction of buildings not only deprives Hamas of its hideouts. It also gives ordinary Palestinians strong reasons to shun groups planning to replicate Hamas’s behavior.