In 1749, the papal police seized a young Roman Jewish woman named Anna del Monte and held her prisoner for thirteen days, during which she was pressured to convert to Catholicism. The account she wrote of her ordeal is the subject of a new book by Kenneth Stow, one of the foremost authorities on the history of the Catholic Church’s treatment of the Jews. He discusses Anna’s story, and puts it in the broader context of Italian Jewish history, in conversation with Nachi Weinstein. (Audio, 71 minutes.)

Commenting on the wave of anti-Hamas demonstrations in the Gaza Strip, Seth Mandel writes:

Gazans have not have been fully honest in public. There’s a reason for that. To take just one example, Amin Abed was nearly beaten to death with hammers for criticizing Hamas. Abed was saved by bystanders, so presumably the intention was to finish him off. During the cease-fire, Hamas members bragged about executing “collaborators” and filmed themselves shooting civilians.

Which is what makes yesterday’s protests all the more significant. To protest Hamas in public is to take one’s life in one’s hands. That is especially true because the protests were bound to be filmed, in order to get the message out to the world. The reason the world needs to hear that message is that Westerners have been Hamas’s willing propaganda tools. The protests on campus are not “pro-Palestinian,” they are pro-Hamas—and the people of Gaza are Hamas’s victims.