In North America, the Middle East, and Central and Eastern Europe, Jews played an outsized role in the production and sale of alcohol in the 17th through 19th centuries. Joel Haber writes:

While many [Polish] Jews turned to trading and peddling, the lords saw a different opportunity. Jews were considered good with business . . . and would be unlikely to drink up the product. So, under a leasing system known in Polish as propinacja, [individual] Jews were granted exclusive rights to run the alcohol industries [on individual estates]. By the middle of the 19th century, approximately 85 percent of all Polish taverns had Jewish management. Jews similarly dominated the industry in the [Russian] Pale of Settlement, . . . though on a slightly lesser scale. Jewish participation in the alcohol business was so prevalent that . . . between 30 and 40 percent of Poland’s Jews (including women and children) worked in the industry.

Simultaneously, back in Ottoman Palestine, wine production was returning for the first time in hundreds of years. Though ancient Israel was well-known as a wine-producing region, hundreds of years of rule by Muslims (for whom alcohol is forbidden) turned the industry into little more than a memory. But when more Jews began immigrating and joining the small community that was already living there, viticulture gradually returned.

Jews rapidly left the business toward the [19th] century’s end, thanks to both increased competition and government oppression, leaving this chapter in our history largely forgotten.

In the past few days, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the al-Qaeda offshoot that led the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad, has consolidated its rule in the core parts of Syria. Its leader, Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, has made a series of public statements, sat for a CNN interview, and discarded his nomme de guerre for his birth name, Ahmad al-Shara—trying to present an image of moderation. But to what extent is this simply a ruse? And what sort of relationship does he envision with Israel?

In an interview with John Haltiwanger, Aaron Zelin gives an overview of Shara’s career, explains why HTS and Islamic State are deeply hostile to each other, and tries to answer these questions:

As we know, Hamas has had a base in Damascus going back years. The question is: would HTS provide an office for Hamas there, especially as it’s now been beaten up in Gaza and been discredited in many ways, with rumors about its office leaving Doha? That’s one of the bigger questions, especially since, pre-October 7, 2023, HTS would support any Hamas rocket attacks across the border. And then HTS cheered on the October 7 attacks and eulogized [the Hamas leaders] Ismail Haniyeh and Yahya Sinwar when they were killed. They’re very pro-Palestinian.

Nonetheless, Zelin believes HTS’s split with al-Qaeda is substantive, even if “we need to be cognizant that they also aren’t these liberal democrats.”

If so, how should Western powers consider their relations with the new Syrian government? Kyle Orton, who likewise thinks the changes to HTS are “not solely a public-relations gambit,” considers whether the UK should take HTS off its list of terrorist groups:

The better approach for now is probably to keep HTS on the proscribed list and engage the group covertly through the intelligence services. That way, the UK can reach a clearer picture of what is being dealt with and test how amenable the group is to following through on promises relating to security and human rights. Israel is known to be following this course, and so, it seems, is the U.S. In this scenario, HTS would receive the political benefit of overt contact as the endpoint of engagement, not the start.