This Saturday evening, Jewish congregations around the world will mark Tisha b’Av by reading the book of Lamentations, a series of elegies—attributed by tradition to the prophet Jeremiah—for the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonian emperor Nebuchadnezzar. The text, Martin Lockshin notes, makes quite clear that the terrible suffering it recounts is divine punishment with such verses as “Jerusalem hath grievously sinned; therefore she is become a mockery” (1:8).

Lockshin details various rabbinic interpretations pointing to particular categories of sin, or even one specific sin, that provoked God’s wrath. But he also notes that some medieval commentators reject these interpretations of the book, an approach with profound implications of its own.

Lamentations leaves us without a specific sin to explain what Judah did to deserve this fate. As Yael Ziegler of Herzog College writes, “Glaringly absent [in Lamentations] is an inventory of Israel’s sins, a consistent portrayal of God’s nature, and a clear notion of how to explain the catastrophic events.”

In fact, according to at least one [passage] in Lamentations, the fate that befell the Israelites in 586 BCE cannot be attributed to any sin that occurred in their days, but to earlier unspecified sins: “Our fathers sinned and are no more; and we must bear their guilt.”

We can understand the desire of the midrashic tradition to find in Lamentations an attempt to explain the tragedy theologically and to discover God’s voice somewhere in the text. At the same time, we can be impressed by the author of Lamentations’ refusal to provide facile explanations, deciding instead simply to mourn the losses experienced by the people.

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.