On Sunday night, the director and screenwriter Jonathan Glazer provided a particularly egregious example of the moral solipsism of which Ruth Wisse speaks by using his acceptance of an Oscar to lambast Israel and its supporters for “hijacking” the Shoah to justify all sorts of crimes. Glazer received the award for The Zone of Interest, his film about Auschwitz—a fact that also supports Wisse’s arguments about the pitfalls of Holocaust memorialization.

Howard Jacobson found the movie to be “ambitious” and “important,” but has some harsher words about Glazer’s comments:

“Hijack!” Consider the import of that word. So despicable are the Jews, they will steal from themselves the most hellish events in their history to justify visiting hell on others.

For a Jew to concur in this fashionable defamation—that Jews are moral profiteers, and that it is only by shedding such Jewishness that a Jew can feel pity—is doubly despicable.

A tragedy does not entail blame, but if Jonathan Glazer must buy into Jewish blame he must buy into Palestinian blame as well. It would have taken real moral courage to pursue that line; right now it takes none to castigate Jews.

While the current Egyptian president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, has never been friendly to Hamas, his government has objected strenuously to the Israeli campaign in the southernmost part of the Gaza Strip. Haisam Hassanein explains why:

Cairo has long been playing a double game, holding Hamas terrorists near while simultaneously trying to appear helpful to the United States and Israel. Israel taking control of Rafah threatens Egypt’s ability to exploit the chaos in Gaza, both to generate profits for regime insiders and so Cairo can pose as an indispensable mediator and preserve access to U.S. money and arms.

Egyptian security officials have looked the other way while Hamas and other Palestinian militants dug tunnels on the Egyptian-Gaza border. That gave Cairo the ability to use the situation in Gaza as a tool for regional influence and to ensure Egypt’s role in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict would not be eclipsed by regional competitors such as Qatar and Turkey.

Some elements close to the Sisi regime have benefited from Hamas control over Gaza and the Rafah crossing. Media reports indicate an Egyptian company run by one of Sisi’s close allies is making hundreds of millions of dollars by taxing Gazans fleeing the current conflict.

Moreover, writes Judith Miller, the Gaza war has been a godsend to the entire Egyptian economy, which was in dire straits last fall. Since October 7, the International Monetary Fund has given the country a much-needed injection of cash, since the U.S. and other Western countries believe it is a necessary intermediary and stabilizing force. Cairo therefore sees the continuation of the war, rather than an Israeli victory, as most desirable. Hassanein concludes:

Adding to its financial incentive, the Sisi regime views the Rafah crossing as a crucial card in preserving Cairo’s regional standing. Holding it increases Egypt’s relevance to countries that want to send aid to the Palestinians and ensures Washington stays quiet about Egypt’s gross human-rights violations so it can maintain a stable flow of U.S. assistance and weaponry. . . . No serious effort to turn the page on Hamas will yield the desired results without cutting this umbilical cord between the Sisi regime and Hamas.