In the wake of the stabbing in Marseille of a Jewish teacher, the leader of the Jewish community has cautioned against wearing kippot in public. Citing this episode, Elliott Abrams recalls George Washington’s letter to the Jews of Newport in which the president expressed his hope that “the children of the stock of Abraham who dwell in this land continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other inhabitants—while ‘every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree and there shall be none to make him afraid’ [Micah 4:4].”

These sentences struck me today because they were true then for Jews in America and are true today, but were not true then for Jews in Europe and are not true [for them] today. . . .

Across Europe, Jews are being told by their own community leaders and rabbis to avoid showing any sign of their religion in public: no prayer shawl, no head covering, no Star of David necklace. Nothing. [It’s] too dangerous. . . .

It is in that context that Washington’s words are so striking. Two-hundred-and-twenty-five years later, Jews in Europe do not have the safety that America’s first president promised Jews in the United States in 1790. Nor is there much reason to think that the predicament of European Jews will be solved; indeed logic suggests that it will worsen. . . . “And there shall be none to make him afraid” is a promise that still eludes Jews in Europe.

Yesterday, Israel’s Channel 12 reported that Israeli representatives have been involved in secret talks, brokered by the United Arab Emirates, with their Syrian counterparts about the potential establishment of diplomatic relations between their countries. Even more surprisingly, on Wednesday an Israeli reporter spoke with a senior official from Syria’s information ministry, Ali al-Rifai. The prospect of a member of the Syrian government, or even a private citizen, giving an on-the-record interview to an Israeli journalist was simply unthinkable under the old regime. What’s more, his message was that Damascus seeks peace with other countries in the region, Israel included.

These developments alone should make Israelis sanguine about Donald Trump’s overtures to Syria’s new rulers. Yet the interim president Ahmed al-Sharaa’s jihadist resumé, his connections with Turkey and Qatar, and brutal attacks on minorities by forces aligned with, or part of, his regime remain reasons for skepticism. While recognizing these concerns, Noah Rothman nonetheless makes the case for optimism:

The old Syrian regime was an incubator and exporter of terrorism, as well as an Iranian vassal state. The Assad regime trained, funded, and introduced terrorists into Iraq intent on killing American soldiers. It hosted Iranian terrorist proxies as well as the Russian military and its mercenary cutouts. It was contemptuous of U.S.-backed proscriptions on the use of chemical weapons on the battlefield, necessitating American military intervention—an unavoidable outcome, clearly, given Barack Obama’s desperate efforts to avoid it. It incubated Islamic State as a counterweight against the Western-oriented rebel groups vying to tear that regime down, going so far as to purchase its own oil from the nascent Islamist group.

The Assad regime was an enemy of the United States. The Sharaa regime could yet be a friend to America. . . . Insofar as geopolitics is a zero-sum game, taking Syria off the board for Russia and Iran and adding it to the collection of Western assets would be a triumph. At the very least, it’s worth a shot. Trump deserves credit for taking it.