Although he was an advocate of religious toleration, the French Enlightenment philosopher Voltaire, like his counterparts in Germany, fervently opposed religion altogether in the name of reason. He was thus no friend of the Jews, believing that their “impertinent fables,” which were at permanent odds with reason, might one day make them “deadly to the human race.” Tracing the history of Enlightenment attitudes toward the Jews through the lens of attitudes toward religion, Gertrude Himmelfarb explains why, by contrast, Jews have fared so well in America:

If Americans can take any comfort in [the history of European philosophers’ anti-Semitism], it is in the thought of how exceptional (as we now say) American history has been—among other things, how different the American Enlightenment and Revolution were from those of the French. Far from seeing reason as antithetical to religion, American thinkers and statesmen, before and after the Revolution, believed reason to be entirely compatible with religion and religion an integral part of society. It was just eight years before Bruno Bauer’s [essay] “The Jewish Question,” [which also took Judaism as the most pernicious example of the evils of religion], that Alexis de Tocqueville decisively refuted it, at least with respect to America.

Unlike the philosophes, he wrote, who believed that “religious zeal .  .  . will be extinguished as freedom and enlightenment increase,” Americans thought religion an ally of both freedom and enlightenment. The first thing that struck Tocqueville on his arrival in the United States was the religious nature of the country. “Among us [the French] I had seen the spirit of religion and the spirit of freedom almost always move in contrary directions. Here I found them united intimately with one another; they reigned together on the same soil.” The country where Christianity was most influential, he noted, was also “the most enlightened and free.”

Tocqueville, without ever mentioning Jews, may have had the last word on the Jewish question, as he did on so many others.

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?