In 1891, an American evangelical lay leader named William Blackstone wrote a memorandum (or “memorial”) calling for the U.S. to take an active role in working toward the restoration of the Jewish people in their ancient homeland, collected the signatures of 413 of America’s most prominent people, and delivered it to then-President Benjamin Harrison. This was a full five years before Theodor Herzl published The Jewish State. Historians have generally assumed that Blackstone’s efforts were little known in Europe, and that Herzl only found out about them later on. Philip Earl Steele has found evidence to the contrary. Of equal importance, he notes the influence on Blackstone of the pre-Herzlian Zionist movement that began in Russia in the 1880s:

In 1888 Blackstone sailed to England to attend a missionary conference, after which he and his daughter Flora journeyed to the Holy Land, where they travelled about on horseback, visiting not only the Christian pilgrimage sites, but also many of the new moshavot (settlements) established earlier in the decade during the First Aliyah. . . . Hence, once back in Chicago in 1889, Blackstone began to reach out to both Jewish and Christian leaders and was soon laying plans for the famous conference [that gave birth to the Blackstone memorial]. Among the several rabbis it featured was the prime mover behind Chicago’s Reform Sinai Temple, Bernhard Felsenthal, who at the opening session delivered the bluntly titled address, “Why Israelites do not accept Jesus as their messiah.”

These facts certainly belie widespread claims that evangelical Zionism has been indifferent to the fate of Jews themselves, or is simply an engine for their conversion. As for Herzl:

One of the first German-language newspapers to cover the Blackstone Memorial was the Wiener Allgemeine Zeitung. Herzl deemed his literary career to have begun with that Viennese paper when he won first prize in its competition for best feuilleton in May 1885. Over the next five years he wrote for the [paper] in various capacities, and continued reading it thereafter. On March 22, 1891, the Wiener Allgemeine Zeitung ran an approximately 650-word piece titled, “The Re-establishment of the Kingdom of Israel.” It begins with an account of a recent local lecture on scriptural prophecies, . . . then pivots to the United States and gives [a] report on the Blackstone Memorial.

To Steele, there can be “no valid doubts” that Herzl was unaware of this and similar reports. Moreover, Steele has discovered actual correspondence between the two following the First Zionist Congress.

Concluded in 1979, the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty ended nearly 30 years of intermittent warfare, and proved one of the most enduring and beneficial products of Middle East diplomacy. But Egypt may not have been upholding its end of the bargain, write Jonathan Schanzer and Mariam Wahba:

Article III, subsection two of the peace agreement’s preamble explicitly requires both parties “to ensure that that acts or threats of belligerency, hostility, or violence do not originate from and are not committed from within its territory.” This clause also mandates both parties to hold accountable any perpetrators of such acts.

Recent Israeli operations along the Philadelphi Corridor, the narrow strip of land bordering Egypt and Gaza, have uncovered multiple tunnels and access points used by Hamas—some in plain sight of Egyptian guard towers. While it could be argued that Egypt has lacked the capacity to tackle this problem, it is equally plausible that it lacks the will. Either way, it’s a serious problem.

Was Egypt motivated by money, amidst a steep and protracted economic decline in recent years? Did Cairo get paid off by Hamas, or its wealthy patron, Qatar? Did the Iranians play a role? Was Egypt threatened with violence and unrest by the Sinai’s Bedouin Union of Tribes, who are the primary profiteers of smuggling, if it did not allow the tunnels to operate? Or did the Sisi regime take part in this operation because of an ideological hatred of Israel?