To mark the first anniversary of Russia’s dramatic expansion of its nine-year war against Ukraine, Dovid Margolin observes the conflict’s effects on the latter country’s Jews through a series of searing vignettes:

Once a quiet industrial port city marked by smokestacks and seagulls, Mariupol was turned into a place of death and horror. Just ask Yevgeny (Avraham) Chernousov. Chernousov left Mariupol towards the end of Passover, on April 21, 2022, after two months of apocalyptic war. “I remember turning to my wife and telling her this was the first time in years that I wouldn’t have matzah and wine on Passover,” he says from the relative safety of Kiev.

Over those two months in Mariupol, Chernousov helped hastily bury more than one of the myriad dead, including his father-in-law, who’d been killed by a projectile. “It was all pieces,” he says matter-of-factly. “When we got there the neighbors were collecting him by the colors of the suit he’d been wearing.” Later, they were able to rebury him near his mother-in-law in an actual cemetery, an outcome thousands of Mariupolites were denied.

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.