The Israeli town of Nahariya, located on the northern part of the Mediterranean coast, was founded by German Jews in the 1930s, and in the 1960s immigrants from Germany and their children still made up the better part of the population. But Erich Gunther Deutecom, who preferred to go by Gidon, wasn’t quite like the others. Matti Friedman attempts to reconstruct his story:

Almost everyone in the town knew German, even if they’d sworn never to speak it again. He was unique because he was the other kind of German. . . .

There’s a small botanical garden you can visit today in Nahariya, a tidy enclosure of tropical plants stalked by peacocks and third-graders. I’d passed it hundreds of times but didn’t know, until informed by Rafi Levinson, a friend of my parents, that it began as a park created by a mysterious stranger who disappeared decades before. This earlier park was divided into twelve sections, one for each of the tribes of Israel, arrayed around an odd structure known as the Tabernacle. The German had created the park with his own hands and money, giving the town a rare public plot of green in a scrappy area where most open spaces were used for cows or cabbage.

“The story,” the doctor said, “was that he’d had a dream where an angel told him to come to the Land of Israel and build the temple.” Nahariya was never more than a station on the way to Jerusalem, he said. “But you don’t build the temple right away. You have to make a long journey.” When Israel captured the Old City and the Temple Mount from Jordan in 1967, Deutecom understood that his plans had been given divine sanction.

In the early 1970s the German abandoned his park and Tabernacle. . . . He next surfaces in a small agricultural village called Segev, in the hills of western Galilee. Here, too, he planted a garden, this one of cacti.

Among Deutecom’s papers are sketches of a grand structure he called the Friedens Tempel, or Peace Temple, which he meant to build in Jerusalem. The temple would bring together Jews, Christians, and Muslims, echoing the biblical description of “a house of prayer for all nations.”

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.