Analyzing the 1970 film I Love My Wife, and its obviously Jewish leading man Elliot Gould, Michael Weingrad observes an “uncomfortable obfuscation of a certain kind of sociological Jewishness” found in other movies of the era:

In I Love My Wife, we see the protagonist early on as an adolescent being launched toward a lifetime of sexual compulsion by a neurotic mother who, for instance, pounds on the bathroom door to make sure he isn’t masturbating. (He is.) It’s all third-rate Portnoy’s Complaint, yet we then see the family at . . . church?

We can see plainly that they are Jews, like the director Mel Stuart; the screenwriter [Robert] Kaufman; Gould, married for a decade to Barbra Streisand; and, it goes without saying, the producers. . . . So why this bizarre pretense that Gould and family are Protestants?

The answer is that I Love My Wife is one of many movies from 1967 to 1972 that stumble awkwardly around the question of how to present overtly Jewish characters, especially men. With painful insecurity, and using the license of the counterculture to overcompensate with aggression and offense, these movies gave us a rogues’ gallery of often profoundly unlikeable characters—though a few are sympathetic anti-heroes.

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?