Early Christian art contains frequent depictions of Jews but rarely gives them any distinctive Jewish features. Then, around the year 1000, Jews begin to appear in European art with pointy hats, beards, and (later) big noses. In Dark Mirror, Sara Lipton argues that the shifting portrayal of Jews reflected changes in Christian attitudes, as Bernard Starr writes in a review:

Jews were included in [early] Christian art “as witnesses” to show their blindness to the divinity of Jesus. The appearance of these Jewish witnesses also confirmed the superiority of Christianity by displaying the defeated lowly status of the scattered and “pathetic” Diaspora Jews—who were forced to scatter as God’s punishment for their blindness. . . .

Both the pointed hat and the beard were artistic inventions for identifying Jews in artworks. Lipton informs us that headwear was commonly used in medieval paintings to indicate rank or station in life. Popes were pictured with tiaras, kings with crowns, and soldiers with helmets. Since Jews had no distinctive headwear to identify them, artists invented the Jewish hat.

[Yet] apart from Jews “witnessing” in these paintings, there was no anti-Semitism or demonization of Jews in 11th- and early-12th-century medieval Christian artworks, Lipton confirms. That took a sharp turn by the mid-12th century, when Jews began to be demonized as enemies of Christianity. That was the beginning of Jews becoming, in Lipton’s words, “the most powerful and poisonous symbol in all of Christian art.”

While conventional wisdom in the Western press believes that the war with Hamas has left Jerusalem more isolated and scuttled chances of expanding the Abraham Accords, Gabriel Scheinmann points to a very different reality. He begins with Iran’s massive drone and missile attack on Israel last month, and the coalition that helped defend against it:

America’s Arab allies had, in various ways, provided intelligence and allowed U.S. and Israeli planes to operate in their airspace. Jordan, which has been vociferously attacking Israel’s conduct in Gaza for months, even publicly acknowledged that it shot down incoming Iranian projectiles. When the chips were down, the Arab coalition held and made clear where they stood in the broader Iranian war on Israel.

The successful batting away of the Iranian air assault also engendered awe in Israel’s air-defense capabilities, which have performed marvelously throughout the war. . . . Israel’s response to the Iranian night of missiles should give further courage to Saudi Arabia to codify its alignment. Israel . . . telegraphed clearly to Tehran that it could hit precise targets without its aircraft being endangered and that the threshold of a direct Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear or other sites had been breached.

The entire episode demonstrated that Israel can both hit Iranian sites and defend against an Iranian response. At a time when the United States is focused on de-escalation and restraint, Riyadh could see quite clearly that only Israel has both the capability and the will to deal with the Iranian threat.

It is impossible to know whether the renewed U.S.-Saudi-Israel negotiations will lead to a normalization deal in the immediate months ahead. . . . Regardless of the status of this deal, [however], or how difficult the war in Gaza may appear, America’s Arab allies have now become Israel’s.