When the American Jewish author Herman Wouk died at the age of one-hundred-and-three, David Rose hadn’t read any of his books, and decided to give one a try. Now a little over a year has passed, and Rose has read most of them—and has concluded that Wouk is a truly great, and greatly underrated, novelist:

Shining through all Wouk’s work is a profound understanding of human nature, and his characters ring true because of their flaws. Wouk himself was a devoted husband, married for almost 66 years until his wife Betty’s death in 2011 (she was also his literary agent). But . . . adulterous liaisons do crop up in even the best-regulated fictional families, while poor Youngblood Hawke, [the protagonist of the eponymous novel], finds himself badly damaged by a long entanglement with an older, married, sexually alluring socialite.

But the thing about Wouk is that although he wasn’t merely [a devoted husband] but deeply religious, the scion of a distinguished rabbinic line who studied the Talmud every day, he was never judgmental. He knew how people behaved, and why, but he didn’t condemn them—unless, like Adolf Eichmann, portrayed in some of the most dramatic scenes in War and Remembrance, they were truly evil.

This points to another key feature of his literary make-up: he was, above all, a Jewish writer, steeped not only in the culture of the American Diaspora in the manner of a Philip Roth or a Saul Bellow, but Judaism’s intellectual and spiritual traditions, which also provide the subject matter of his principal non-fiction books. More than anything, what distinguishes Judaism from Christianity, especially in its more deterministic . . . variants, is its attitude to sin, repentance, and redemption—something whose origins lie in the flawed lives of its patriarchs.

He was also an unabashed Zionist, who spent much time in Israel and got to know figures such as David Ben-Gurion who are portrayed in his two Israel novels, The Hope and The Glory. . . . Nowadays, Zionism is even less fashionable in bien-pensant circles than literary fiction that consciously builds on the methods of 19th-century novelists. Maybe that also explains why Wouk’s reputation is suffering—if it’s still being considered at all. But who writing now dares tackle such vast themes, or emulates his ambition? It’s time for a Wouk renaissance.

Concluded in 1979, the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty ended nearly 30 years of intermittent warfare, and proved one of the most enduring and beneficial products of Middle East diplomacy. But Egypt may not have been upholding its end of the bargain, write Jonathan Schanzer and Mariam Wahba:

Article III, subsection two of the peace agreement’s preamble explicitly requires both parties “to ensure that that acts or threats of belligerency, hostility, or violence do not originate from and are not committed from within its territory.” This clause also mandates both parties to hold accountable any perpetrators of such acts.

Recent Israeli operations along the Philadelphi Corridor, the narrow strip of land bordering Egypt and Gaza, have uncovered multiple tunnels and access points used by Hamas—some in plain sight of Egyptian guard towers. While it could be argued that Egypt has lacked the capacity to tackle this problem, it is equally plausible that it lacks the will. Either way, it’s a serious problem.

Was Egypt motivated by money, amidst a steep and protracted economic decline in recent years? Did Cairo get paid off by Hamas, or its wealthy patron, Qatar? Did the Iranians play a role? Was Egypt threatened with violence and unrest by the Sinai’s Bedouin Union of Tribes, who are the primary profiteers of smuggling, if it did not allow the tunnels to operate? Or did the Sisi regime take part in this operation because of an ideological hatred of Israel?