Thanks to a proclamation from Mayor Muriel Bowser, Washington, DC officially recognized yesterday as “Mimouna, a Festival of Good Neighbors.” Yet this traditional North African Jewish celebration, which in recent years has become increasingly mainstream in Israel and even in parts of the Diaspora, in fact took place last week, marking the conclusion of Passover. Mimouna’s origins and etymology are unclear. One common explanation states that it marks the anniversary of the death of Maimon ben Joseph, father of the great Rabbi Moses Maimonides; another that it is a leyl emunah, or “night of faith.”

Avi Finegold and Phoebe Maltz Bovy take the occasion to discuss not just the holiday itself, but also the musical traditions of North African Jewry, the Moroccan Jewish community of Montreal, and that community’s greatest musician, Samy Elmaghribi, with Christopher Silver. (Audio, 54 minutes.)

If there is to be peace, Palestinians will have to unlearn the hatred of Israel they have imbibed during nearly two decades of Hamas rule. This will be a difficult task, but Cole Aronson argues, drawing on the experiences of World War II, that Israel has already gotten off to a strong start:

The population’s compliance can . . . be won by a new regime that satisfies its immediate material needs, even if that new regime is sponsored by a government until recently at war with the population’s former regime. Axis civilians were made needy through bombing. Peaceful compliance with the Allies became a good alternative to supporting violent resistance to the Allies.

Israel’s current campaign makes a moderate Gaza more likely, not less. Destroying Hamas not only deprives Islamists of the ability to rule—it proves the futility of armed resistance to Israel, a condition for peace. The destruction of buildings not only deprives Hamas of its hideouts. It also gives ordinary Palestinians strong reasons to shun groups planning to replicate Hamas’s behavior.