On Friday August 23, 1929, Arabs armed with clubs and swords attacked Jews throughout Jerusalem. The next day, Arabs in Hebron rioted, killing some 67 Jews, injuring another 50, desecrating synagogues, and mutilating their victims. The British authorities convened a board of inquiry, which came to be known as the Shaw commission, to investigate. Douglas Feith and Sean Durns point to a familiar blind spot in the commission’s conclusions:

The commission noted that Arab objections to Zionism were ideological, comprehensive, intense, and inflexible. In its report, it nonetheless devoted thousands of words to minute details of specific Arab grievances. It plumbed complaints that Jews, on one occasion, brought a chair to Jerusalem’s Western Wall and, on another, set up a screen there to divide male and female worshipers.

All this brings to mind the story of a man who thoroughly detests his wife but makes his case for divorce on the grounds that she doesn’t put the cap back on the toothpaste tube. Obviously, what he gripes about is not what accounts for his detestation. Confusion on this score was characteristic of Middle East policy officials in 1929, and it still is.

Today’s conventional wisdom holds that Palestinian–Israeli peace will result from resolving the “final-status issues” (borders, water rights, security arrangements, settlements, etc.). This is to assume away profound Muslim religious and Arab national objections to Israel’s very existence. It is like believing that the man detests his wife because of the toothpaste cap. . . .

Similarly, today, enemies of the Jewish state blame anti-Israel terrorism less on the terrorists and jihadist ideology than on defensive actions by Israel—building security barriers and operating checkpoints in and around the West Bank and Gaza, for example—which are described as “provocations” that fuel Palestinian resentment. To commemorate the 1929 riots is to refute the common error that the conflict is about the “occupation” that began in 1967. Arab anti-Zionist violence predates not only 1967 but Israel’s birth in 1948. It started even before the Hebron massacre.

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.