Having grown up in the Soviet Union, Yevgenia Albats became a journalist and pro-democracy activist after the fall of Communism, and has also been involved in Jewish communal affairs. She is currently editor-in-chief of the New Times, one of Russia’s major opposition magazines. In an interview with Cathy Young, she recalls the anti-Semitism she faced as a child:

[E]veryday anti-Semitism was incredibly widespread in the Soviet Union. In Moscow, and anywhere [else], it was very easy to [hear the slur] zhidovskaya morda, [ “kikeface”] thrown at you. When we rode the tram or bus to school—my sister and I and another Jewish friend—we had a habit of looking around and finding the Jews. . . . They were people from whom we could expect protection. Why? Because one day when I was about nine, my sister and I were coming home from school and several girls in the yard of our building, who had been our playmates, jumped us and ripped off our Young Pioneer scarves, [symbolizing membership in the Communist-party youth movement], shouting, “You Yids have no right to wear Pioneer scarves.”

Years later, . . . I realized that it was the year of the Six-Day War. The Soviet Union had severed diplomatic relations with Israel, and the newspapers were full of talk about those evil Zionists. And there was, of course, a massive tide of anti-Semitism.

Nowadays, Albats comments, Jews seem safer in Moscow than in much of Western Europe. But she is concerned by the prominence of former KGB officers (whom she refers to as chekists, after the organization’s precursor) in the current government:

Of course, anti-Semitism was a very strong component of the KGB’s ideology. For the KGB, the Jews were a fifth column because they were people who finished Soviet universities and then took off for their “historical home,” always ready to sell out the Motherland. But today, until such time as the state signs off on it, this is going to be fairly muted.

Putin is not an anti-Semite; this is a known fact. But [some of his top allies] are. [T]he chekists devoutly believe in a global Jewish conspiracy and a world Jewish government. When they searched the offices of our magazine [in 2007 or 2008], the colonel who was in charge said to me, “I realize, Yevgenia Markovna, that you’re going to get the entire Jewish world on its feet. We know [Edgar] Bronfman is a friend of yours.” I may have met Bronfman twice in my life. But I never try to disabuse them of this notion. I tell them, “Yes, we run the world.” Let them believe it.

Unless there is a major change in the nature of the Russian regime, Albats believes that a resurgence of state-sponsored anti-Semitism is inevitable.

Recent satellite imagery has shown a buildup of Egyptian tanks near the Israeli border, in violation of Egypt-Israel agreements going back to the 1970s. It’s possible Cairo wants to prevent Palestinians from entering the Sinai from Gaza, or perhaps it wants to send a message to the U.S. that it will take all measures necessary to keep that from happening. But there is also a chance, however small, that it could be preparing for something more dangerous. David Wurmser examines President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi’s predicament:

Egypt’s abysmal behavior in allowing its common border with Gaza to be used for the dangerous smuggling of weapons, money, and materiel to Hamas built the problem that exploded on October 7. Hamas could arm only to the level that Egypt enabled it. Once exposed, rather than help Israel fix the problem it enabled, Egypt manufactured tensions with Israel to divert attention from its own culpability.

Now that the Trump administration is threatening to remove the population of Gaza, President Sisi is reaping the consequences of a problem he and his predecessors helped to sow. That, writes Wurmser, leaves him with a dilemma:

On one hand, Egypt fears for its regime’s survival if it accepts Trump’s plan. It would position Cairo as a participant in a second disaster, or nakba. It knows from its own history; King Farouk was overthrown in 1952 in part for his failure to prevent the first nakba in 1948. Any leader who fails to stop a second nakba, let alone participates in it, risks losing legitimacy and being seen as weak. The perception of buckling on the Palestine issue also resulted in the Egyptian president Anwar Sadat’s assassination in 1981. President Sisi risks being seen by his own population as too weak to stand up to Israel or the United States, as not upholding his manliness.

In a worst-case scenario, Wurmser argues, Sisi might decide that he’d rather fight a disastrous war with Israel and blow up his relationship with Washington than display that kind of weakness.