Raised in a devout British evangelical family, Laurence Oliphant (1829–1888) had a successful career as a diplomat, intelligence agent, and foreign correspondent, despite his peculiar personal life and his involvement in various mystical religious movements. At one point he gave up a seat in parliament to join a cult-like sect in western New York with his family. Oliphant eventually embraced the idea of establishing a Jewish state in the Land of Israel. Unlike other early Christian Zionists, he cooperated extensively with the pre-Herzlian Zionist movement known as Ḥibat Tsiyon, traveling to Galicia and Romania to meet with Jewish leaders. Philip Earl Steele writes:

[Oliphant was well aware of] the fears of Great Britain that, following the Congress of Berlin in 1878, Russia—blocked from further expansion into the Balkans because of the emergence of the new states of Romania and Bulgaria—would now attempt to seize areas in the Levant from the Ottomans. Thus, combining his religious and imperial motives, [he] devised his “plan for Gilead,” presenting it as a way to solve Britain’s worries by establishing a Jewish colony under the protection of Great Britain.

[The plan] soon obtained the backing of Prime Minister Disraeli (a longstanding Zionist), and he in turn swiftly won over Foreign Minister Salisbury. In late November 1878 the three men met together to discuss the idea with the prince of Wales (later King Edward VII) at Sandringham, one result of which was that Oliphant received his [diplomatic] credentials. In February 1879 he set sail for the Levant on a mission George Eliot also expressed approval for.

Oliphant soon also met Vienna’s Peretz Smolenskin, the eminent Zionist activist who published the Hebrew-language journal Ha-Shaḥar (“The Dawn”). Smolenskin had been very favorably impressed with Oliphant’s plan for the Jewish colonization of Palestine, and in fact had presented it in Ha-Shaḥar the previous autumn. In Vienna, in the early spring of 1882, Smolenskin and the Oliphants became friends—Laurence Oliphant and [his wife] Alice even invited Smolenskin to travel on with them to Palestine in the aim of fostering the Jewish colonies anticipated soon to arise there.

Oliphant would enjoy the endorsement of the Zionist impresario David Gordon and even publish in his journal Ha-Magid (“The Preacher”). In time, Oliphant and his wife would settle in Haifa to pursue his Zionist endeavors and hire as his private secretary Naftali Imber, best known as the author of Israel’s national anthem. As Steele goes on to detail, Oliphant’s efforts paved the way for the founding of the early settlements of Zikhron Yaakov and Rosh Pinah.

Analyzing the recent direct Iranian attack on Israel, and Israel’s security situation more generally, Michael Oren looks to the 2015 agreement to restrain Iran’s nuclear program. That, and President Biden’s efforts to resurrect the deal after Donald Trump left it, are in his view the source of the current crisis:

Of the original motivations for the deal—blocking Iran’s path to the bomb and transforming Iran into a peaceful nation—neither remained. All Biden was left with was the ability to kick the can down the road and to uphold Barack Obama’s singular foreign-policy achievement.

In order to achieve that result, the administration has repeatedly refused to punish Iran for its malign actions:

Historians will survey this inexplicable record and wonder how the United States not only allowed Iran repeatedly to assault its citizens, soldiers, and allies but consistently rewarded it for doing so. They may well conclude that in a desperate effort to avoid getting dragged into a regional Middle Eastern war, the U.S. might well have precipitated one.

While America’s friends in the Middle East, especially Israel, have every reason to feel grateful for the vital assistance they received in intercepting Iran’s missile and drone onslaught, they might also ask what the U.S. can now do differently to deter Iran from further aggression. . . . Tehran will see this weekend’s direct attack on Israel as a victory—their own—for their ability to continue threatening Israel and destabilizing the Middle East with impunity.

Israel, of course, must respond differently. Our target cannot simply be the Iranian proxies that surround our country and that have waged war on us since October 7, but, as the Saudis call it, “the head of the snake.”