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.”

Last Friday, the Israeli defense minister Benny Gantz announced the designation of six Palestinian organizations as terrorist groups due to their deep entanglements with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which has been committing murderous attacks since 1968. Both the EU and several European states have provided funds to the recently proscribed organizations. A decade ago, pro-Israel activists even supplied the European Union with information, for a long time ignored, about the links between these groups and the PFLP. Members of one group—the Union of Agricultural Work Committees—murdered the seventeen-year-old Rina Shnerb in 2019. Jonathan Tobin writes: