(Oct. 19, 2023)

In his declaration of war on Gaza on Oct. 7, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel quoted a line from a poem by the Jewish writer Chaim Nachman Bialik. “Revenge for the blood of a little child has yet been devised by Satan,” Mr. Netanyahu posted on social media.

Perhaps the prime minister forgot what Bialik wrote just one line before that: “And cursed be he who cries out: Revenge.” Or the next lines: “Let the blood fill the abyss!/let it pierce the blackest depths.”

These days I find myself asking what the poet meant by this. Bialik wrote it after learning of the horrors of the 1903 Kishinev pogrom.