Searching for Historical Parallels for October 7, and Finding Uncharted Territory

Taking a very different approach, Cecile Kuznitz looks at the ways Jews around the world have tried to make sense of Hamas’s sadistic massacres and in doing so put them into the context of Jewish memory. It has, for instance, become commonplace to refer to these orgies of rape and murder as pogroms, and, while they share a certain resemblance to those East European outbursts of anti-Semitic violence, the differences are every bit as profound. Yet Kuznitz finds one especially important parallel:

The pogroms of 1881–1882 in the Russian empire constituted the most sustained wave of anti-Jewish riots in the modern period up to that time. Their horrors partly inspired both mass immigration to America and the Zionist movement. Yet their importance as a turning point in Jewish history and their relevance to the Hamas massacre lie less in the violence itself than in the reaction of Russian society. The right-wing press cited Jewish exploitation as the root cause of the disturbances, and the government showed more enthusiasm for prosecuting members of Jewish self-defense groups than the pogrom instigators.

These reactions were, sadly, unsurprising; what was truly demoralizing was the response of the more radical elements in Russian society, whom Jews had considered to be beyond anti-Semitic canards and sympathetic to their plight. Most of the intelligentsia remained silent, while much of the left endorsed the pogroms as a healthy expression of grassroots anger at an oppressive system. The leaders of the revolutionary socialist movement Narodnaya Volya (People’s Will) addressed “the peasants who rise up in Elizavetgrad, Kiev, Smela [sites of pogroms] to free themselves from their enemies: ‘You have begun to rebel against the Jews. You have done well.’”

This betrayal by the left has clear echoes today, as liberal and progressive Jews find many of their erstwhile political allies condoning violence against their Israeli counterparts and minimizing evidence of anti-Semitism in the United States.

Looking for historical analogies in times of crisis is inevitable, yet if many of them fall short, it may be a sign that we are truly now in uncharted territory. . . . A year after the Hamas massacre and the ensuing war, we may be standing at an inflection point whose significance we cannot yet grasp.

Read more at Jewish Review of Books

More about: Gaza War 2023, Jewish history, Pogroms

Egypt Is Trapped by the Gaza Dilemma It Helped to Create

Feb. 14 2025

Recent satellite imagery has shown a buildup of Egyptian tanks near the Israeli border, in violation of Egypt-Israel agreements going back to the 1970s. It’s possible Cairo wants to prevent Palestinians from entering the Sinai from Gaza, or perhaps it wants to send a message to the U.S. that it will take all measures necessary to keep that from happening. But there is also a chance, however small, that it could be preparing for something more dangerous. David Wurmser examines President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi’s predicament:

Egypt’s abysmal behavior in allowing its common border with Gaza to be used for the dangerous smuggling of weapons, money, and materiel to Hamas built the problem that exploded on October 7. Hamas could arm only to the level that Egypt enabled it. Once exposed, rather than help Israel fix the problem it enabled, Egypt manufactured tensions with Israel to divert attention from its own culpability.

Now that the Trump administration is threatening to remove the population of Gaza, President Sisi is reaping the consequences of a problem he and his predecessors helped to sow. That, writes Wurmser, leaves him with a dilemma:

On one hand, Egypt fears for its regime’s survival if it accepts Trump’s plan. It would position Cairo as a participant in a second disaster, or nakba. It knows from its own history; King Farouk was overthrown in 1952 in part for his failure to prevent the first nakba in 1948. Any leader who fails to stop a second nakba, let alone participates in it, risks losing legitimacy and being seen as weak. The perception of buckling on the Palestine issue also resulted in the Egyptian president Anwar Sadat’s assassination in 1981. President Sisi risks being seen by his own population as too weak to stand up to Israel or the United States, as not upholding his manliness.

In a worst-case scenario, Wurmser argues, Sisi might decide that he’d rather fight a disastrous war with Israel and blow up his relationship with Washington than display that kind of weakness.

Read more at The Editors

More about: Egypt, Gaza War 2023