On the May issue:

What Went Wrong on October 7

To the Editor:
I commend Jonathan Foreman’s very well-written and thorough article explaining what went wrong when Hamas attacked Israel (“The Untold Story of How Israel Failed on October 7,” May). Israel must obviously correct for its failures.

But we must not lose sight of the IDF’s response to October 7 and the crushing defeat it has administered to Hamas and Hezbollah, including eliminating of most of their leaders. It is this response that has tilted the Middle East balance of power in Israel’s favor. 

October 7 was a greater intelligence failure on Hamas’s part than on Israel’s. Hamas underestimated the willingness of Israelis to fight for their country and to destroy their enemies. Thus, the terrorist group is being destroyed.
Anderson Harkov
Modi’in, Israel

To the Editor:
Jonathan Foreman’s blistering report on the abject failures of Israel’s military, security, and political leadership is a stark reminder to the world of how quickly events can escalate out of control when structural leadership fails through complacency or overconfidence.

Foreman’s article reads as a wake-up call to all tiers of Israeli leadership at a time of escalating global tensions. Bravo!
Michael Williams-Jones
Sarasota, Florida

To the Editor:
What an excellent article by Jonathan Foreman. I appreciate the great amount of detail, which is lacking in many other commentaries on October 7. I offer two related points:

First, each of us can express an opinion about who on the Israeli side is responsible for the many errors of October 7, but the people who will truly decide are the Israeli electorate.  In the upcoming election in October 2026, the voters will decide who bears responsibility for what, and to what degree.

Second, a major part of the voters’ consideration will be informed by the results of an official commission of inquiry into the tragedy. This will not be a “state commission,” because that would be headed by former Chief Judge Esther Hayut, who is anathema to all the parties in the coalition.  They feel she would turn the commission into a blame fest, rather than a true inquiry. Rather it will be a “government commission,” with members of both the coalition and the opposition. The commission will be formed after the war, in late 2025 or early 2026.  In accordance with well-established practice, it will issue its preliminary report about four to six months later, likely in the summer of 2026, well before the election.
Larry M. Goldstein
Modi’in, Israel

To the Editor:
I’m certain that as time goes on, there will be more information available to supplement Jonathan Foreman’s excellent and chilling article on the failure of Israel’s military and security establishments on October 7 (witness the recent arrest of an alleged Shin Bet double agent working for Hamas).

There is an additional factor worth considering in thinking about why Israel came up short. The IDF and security establishments have been weakened by the idea that the primary dangers to the country are not outside threats but rather Jews who oppose the political solution favored by the country’s intellectual elite, i.e., a two-state solution. Whence the willful blindness and wishful thinking that Foreman so thoroughly reports on? How, after all, could those entrusted with protecting the country from its eternal enemies not have considered the possibility of an attack on the scale of October 7?

Before the attack, Hamas had started four significant shooting wars since 2008, the most recent in May 2021. To even consider the notion that Hamas is a genocidal organization, and that the people of Gaza support its genocidal goals, would mean that considerations of a two-state solution were likely foolhardy if not suicidal. Even today, the Israeli left is scrambling to salvage the two-state solution, as evidenced by Ehud Olmert’s recent call for the Palestine Authority to run Gaza. Unless the leadership of the military and security establishments realize that their jobs are to protect the nation and that it is the elected civilian government’s responsibility to make political decisions, such failures may (God forbid) be repeated.
Laurence Tauber
Staten Island, New York

The U.S–Qatar Problem

To the Editor:
All of Jonathan Schanzer’s revelations about Qatar are disturbing on many different levels but all for the same reason (“Catering to Qatar,” May). Qatar’s injection of itself into many significant areas involving U.S. politics, educational entities, and financial matters is very dangerous indeed.  It appears at face value that the Qataris’ insidious en-croachment has weakened U.S. resolve regarding a plethora of actions and activities, all to the ultimate disadvantage of America. The Iranian threat is one such issue right now.

For all those who fall into the category of “miscreants” regarding their failure to act truly on behalf of the United States of America, I leave Sigmund Freud’s warning: “History repeats itself because man repeats the same patterns of behavior.”  To those now in power, think before you act, lest you have cause for serious regret in the future.
Arthur Solomon Safir
Warwick, Pennsylvania

To the Editor:
I had two reactions to Jonathan Schanzer’s article “Catering to Qatar.” First, I was grateful to finally have an explanation for why the U.S. cooperates as we do with the Qataris. Second, I felt sick to my stomach, at times, reading about how willingly U.S. officials play into Qatari hands and then say, “Thank you very much!” after we or our allies get burned by them. From all that Schanzer has recounted, it seems that Qatar is a hair’s breadth away from owning us completely and only quick, decisive action can stop that. The question is, will Qatari money or American self-preservation win the day?
Liz Wagner
South Pasadena, Florida

The Jewishness of Proust

To the Editor:
Joseph Epstein’s article on Marcel Proust was very interesting and took on a fascinating subject (“In Search of a Lost Jew,” May). I have read Proust from cover to cover—it took me a year and a half—and I remember how shocked and delighted I was when it was revealed that Swann was Jewish.

There are a few ways, not mentioned by Epstein, in which In Search of Lost Time is particularly Jewish. For one thing, Judaism and Jewish culture are uniquely focused on both time and remembrance. Abraham Heschel described the Jewish sabbath as cathedrals of time. While Proust wrote of cathedrals and their art, his main focus was always time.

Proust also describes brilliantly and at great length Swann’s Jewishness, the Dreyfus affair, and the place of Jews in the upper echelons of the evolving French society (only about 100 years after Napoleon had granted Jews emancipation). Someone wanting to study or understand what it was like to be a Jew in Europe during the Dreyfus period could do no better than to read Proust. While Kafka was a master at describing in a dreamlike fashion the surreal paranoia and uneasiness of being a Jew at that time, Proust described in a subtle yet clear way the pain and disappointment of being rejected and shunned by a Gentile world that you once thought accepting of you. More pages were spent on that than on Swann’s homosexuality, which no one fails to stress.

There is something very talmu-dic about Proust’s method of writing and self-editing: the way concepts, stories, philosophy, and commentary are introduced one after the other from different viewpoints, all on the same page, and no subject being too small for inspection and dissection. Proust’s rare sense of clarity and honesty is, to me, clearly the product of Jewish thinking, analysis, and commentary. And it is rolled into a brilliant work of fiction that, in the end, is more Jewish in these ways than any book I have ever read.
Marty Radburd
New York City