H. G. Adler is best known (to the extent that he is known at all) for his sociological studies of the Holocaust. But he also wrote a series of novels based on his own experiences at Theresienstadt and Auschwitz, and his life after the war. The last of these, The Wall, recently made available in English, deals with the burdens of survival. Adam Kirsch writes:

Of all the different genres of Holocaust literature, the survivor’s story is perhaps the most challenging. It is the story of an aftermath, of a life lived in the shadow of events that are so terrible they can never achieve the banality of “closure.” And it is precisely this unresolved quality, this sense that a survivor’s life has broken away from all recognized narrative patterns, that gives The Wall its uneasy power. Its protagonist, Arthur Landau, is given to saying that he does not exist, and the whole book is like a document of what it feels like to live without existing: “I realize I don’t belong to human society. . . . I am not part of any continuum that allows those who are self-evident—so they maintain, at least—to discover something in common or at least assume it.”

As we mentioned in yesterday’s newsletter, Israeli special forces carried out a daring boots-on-the-ground raid on September 8 targeting the Scientific Studies and Research Center (SSRC) in northwestern Syria. The site was used for producing and storing missiles which are then transferred to Hizballah in Lebanon. Jonathan Spyer notes that the raid was accompanied by extensive airstrikes in Syira,and followed a few days later by extensive attacks on Hizballah in Lebanon, one of which killed Mohammad Qassem al-Shaer, a senior officer in the terrorist group’s Radwan force, an elite infantry group. And yesterday, the IDF destroyed a weapons depot, an observation post, and other Hizballah positions. Spyer puts these attacks in context:

The direct purpose of the raid, of course, was the destruction of the facilities and materials targeted. But Israel also appeared to be delivering a message to the Syrian regime that it should not imagine itself to be immune should it choose to continue its involvement with the Iran-led axis’s current campaign against Israel.

Similarly, the killing of al-Shaer indicated that Israel is no longer limiting its response to Hizballah attacks to the border area. Rather, Hizballah operatives in Israel’s crosshairs are now considered fair game wherever they may be located in Lebanon.

The SSRC raid and the killing of al-Shaer are unlikely to have been one-off events. Rather, they represent the systematic broadening of the parameters of the conflict in the north. Hizballah commenced the current round of fighting on October 8, in support of Hamas in Gaza. It has vowed to stop firing only when a ceasefire is reached in the south—a prospect which currently seems distant.