Reviewing a recent biography of Don Isaac Abravanel (1437-1508)—the Portuguese-born rabbi and courtier who led Spain’s Jewish community during the time of its expulsion—Cole Aronson notes just how hard a figure he is to pigeonhole. While a heroic Jewish leader and dedicated scholar who wrote rabbinic works and biblical commentaries that are still studied today, he worked at various points in his life as a treasurer to the king of Portugal, a tax farmer and provisioner to Queen Isabella of Castile, a Neapolitan merchant trading in salt, grain, and oil, and a Venetian diplomat. Aronson adds that he was “arguably the first modern Jewish political thinker.”

The World Health Assembly—the annual meeting of the UN’s World Health Organization (WHO)—will conclude in Geneva tomorrow. As it has every year since 1968, it dedicated part of its time to discussing “health conditions in the occupied Palestinian territory, including east Jerusalem, and in the occupied Syrian Golan.” The fact that this is a permanent yearly agenda item for the assembly has nothing to do with any special medical circumstances in these areas, nor with any particular ability the WHO has to provide healthcare to their inhabitants. Rather, it is another example of the capture of the United Nations by the anti-Israel movement. David May explains: