The 1st-century-CE Alexandrian scholar and rhetorician Apion may be known today not for his commentaries on Homer—all of which were lost—but for his slanderous writings on the Jews, as Eli Kavon writes:

Apion’s attacks on Jews presage charges of ritual murder leveled against Jews in medieval Christendom. . . . While none of his writings are extant, we know of Apion’s anti-Semitism from the great ancient Jewish historian Josephus. In Against Apion, written by Josephus decades after Apion’s death, the Jewish historian . . . defends Judaism against the attacks of Apion and his [sometime co-author] Chaeremon.

The lies leveled at Jews in their work include deriving the word “Sabbath” from an ancient Egyptian word for a disease of the groin and claiming that Jews worshiped an ass’s head in the Jerusalem Temple. The worst libel to come from Apion, however, was the accusation that Jews would kidnap a Greek child, fatten him up, [sacrifice him], and ritually consume him in Jerusalem. This charge would come back to haunt the Jews 1,000 years later, and variations persist to this day.

Analyzing the recent direct Iranian attack on Israel, and Israel’s security situation more generally, Michael Oren looks to the 2015 agreement to restrain Iran’s nuclear program. That, and President Biden’s efforts to resurrect the deal after Donald Trump left it, are in his view the source of the current crisis:

Of the original motivations for the deal—blocking Iran’s path to the bomb and transforming Iran into a peaceful nation—neither remained. All Biden was left with was the ability to kick the can down the road and to uphold Barack Obama’s singular foreign-policy achievement.

In order to achieve that result, the administration has repeatedly refused to punish Iran for its malign actions:

Historians will survey this inexplicable record and wonder how the United States not only allowed Iran repeatedly to assault its citizens, soldiers, and allies but consistently rewarded it for doing so. They may well conclude that in a desperate effort to avoid getting dragged into a regional Middle Eastern war, the U.S. might well have precipitated one.

While America’s friends in the Middle East, especially Israel, have every reason to feel grateful for the vital assistance they received in intercepting Iran’s missile and drone onslaught, they might also ask what the U.S. can now do differently to deter Iran from further aggression. . . . Tehran will see this weekend’s direct attack on Israel as a victory—their own—for their ability to continue threatening Israel and destabilizing the Middle East with impunity.

Israel, of course, must respond differently. Our target cannot simply be the Iranian proxies that surround our country and that have waged war on us since October 7, but, as the Saudis call it, “the head of the snake.”